


The Captain and the Cook

by ahimsabitches, ravenousgrue



Category: Treasure Planet (2002)
Genre: Age Difference, F/F, F/M, Lots of Angst, Older Man/Younger Woman, Self-Harm, Size Difference, Slow Burn, Space madness!!, Telepathy, bearpeople, if you're into that i can point you to the right fic, implied rape, incredibly inaccurate astronomy, incredibly inaccurate biology in general, incredibly inaccurate botany, just one, lots of grammatical errors, no morph is not involved in the porn, of which there is one, poor morph, thank god there is just one
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-15
Updated: 2018-05-23
Packaged: 2018-05-26 22:33:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 56
Words: 42,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6258406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ahimsabitches/pseuds/ahimsabitches, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenousgrue/pseuds/ravenousgrue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>THIS STORY IS UPDATING AGAIN! UPDATES EVERY WEDNESDAY!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Only That (ravenousgrue)

**Author's Note:**

> Beware; here be grammatical errors. I'm only fixing the bald and glaring spelling errors; everything else is going up here as is. This is a ROLEPLAY, NOT a finished piece of fiction, so there will be the occasional hiccup between chapters. 
> 
> I will tag violent/explicit/porny/disturbing chapters with notes in the beginning.

It was only a lifelong obsession, after all. Only the thing that had maimed him, shaped him into the man he was, only the singular thing that had fueled him since he'd been a young man.

Only _that_.

He'd pocketed enough treasure to retire like a king, but as spectacularly as that particular chapter in his life had ended, he'd been left wanting. Unfortunately, he wasn't sure what it was he was wanting. You could never have too much wealth in his opinion, but now that he had more than his fair share -- on top of all he'd already earned, an impressive haul on it's own -- he wasn't sure why he still felt the overpowering gnaw for _something_. Some of it was the ever-present siren song of the void, every star a rare jewel desperately chasing away the darkness, but that wasn't _all_ of it. Not anymore.

John wasn't used to being _unsettled_ , and so after a rather lengthy shore leave at his favorite brothel he'd gotten himself underway. A new ship, a new crew, nothing fancy. Modest, even. Some pirates went overboard, so to speak, spending their hard earned loot on frivolous things, but Long John Silver was a frugal man who intended to die a very comfortable, happy old man.

_You're_ already _old, John_ , he thought dryly to himself, ordering his crew a round (on him) before he settled in with his own drink. They cheered him and he raised his mug and grinned at them. Off-kilter as he was these days, nothing made him feel more settled than looking after a good crew. And he _did_ have a good one, this time. Seemed like crew got younger and younger these days, all but a handful of them eager pups with stars in their eyes.

He had a fondness for that sort, and they were less likely to be murderous scalawags besides.

They were a mercenary crew, not a one of them without _some_ sort of criminal record, hardly a lot of innocents, but their mission was a reasonably honest one, the financier a daring sort who was looking to make some colony claims in an uncharted region. Uncharted because it was a haven for pirates, dense with dangerous anomalies that were perfect for making daring escapes. John knew the area well, knew all the illegal colonies, knew all the best hiding spots for when the Galactic Navy had its flagship hunting you down.

He'd get the fellah his monies worth, he and his crew would be paid handsomely, and maybe he'd figure out what the devil he was going to do with the rest of his life.

John didn't stay introspective long. The alcohol flowed and the singing started and before he knew it he was setting a _very_ poor example on the eve of a long and dangerous mission into a pirate-infested sector of space. One of the barmaids had taken up a perch in his lap at some point, although even drunk John could see she'd picked his 'good' side, doing her best to pretend the cybernetics that infested his right side weren't there. No point trying to charm her upstairs: it didn't get prettier when he started shucking things off.

Still, _she_ was pretty, and she even gave him a kiss on the cheek before she slipped away, her employer yelling at her to get back to work. Plenty of fine lasses in the ports they'd be visiting in the future. Less _squeamish_ ones, too. These colony lasses weren't used to folks who couldn't afford fancier implants. And John _could_ , but he didn't see the point when put so much bloody wear on them. They pained him sometimes, but it'd be that much more a relief when he finally did retire.

And he was a sentimental man, besides. They were outdated, but they worked just fine. And you couldn't install illegal modifications into the fancier models.

John was drunk enough to order a round for the entire _tavern_ once it got late enough, and he got his fair share of pats on the back for that. And then, of course, he had to tell _The Story_.

With his own little tweaks, of course. His version was much more _complimentary_ , and he was sure not to hint at Jim's real identity. The lad had his own life to lead, an honest one from what John had found out with the occasional snoop. He was a good boy, Jimbo. Looking after his mum, a _man_ now, not a boy at all.

Of course once the story was finished he had loads of questions to answer, but eventually it got very late and he was alone by the fire, nursing his last mug. He was tired but not quite yet willing to haul his arse to bed. Not yet.

The fire always reminded him of the inferno they'd flown straight into. He could still feel the heat pricking his skin, still feel his heart hammering as he squinted at the tiny figure of Jim on his jerry-rigged board, the only thing between all of them and a horrible, instantaneous death.

It made him smile.


	2. Curious (ahimsabitches)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No warnings for this chapter.

Lightning Perry, named for the speed (not necessarily the quality) of his service, poked his porcine head around the doorway and squealed at her. "Quittin' time, girl!" 

Bonnie uncurled herself from the bundle of wires and tiny articulated steel joints over which she'd been hunched, and pulled off her welding mask. She armed sweat from her brow, gazing down at her work with a wry quirk of her mouth. Perry had hired her because she'd agreed to work for cheaper than any skilled welder wandering the docks. When she'd told him she couldn't weld at all, he'd shrugged his hairy shoulders and said "Eh, ye'll figger it out." She glanced up at the diagram, propped against a toolbox, of how the assembly should have looked, a faded impossibly complex ideogram printed on a piece of paper yellowed and softened with age and use. All straight lines and neatly arranged wires. Quike unlike the lumpy, tortured mess that leaned drunkenly on her pockmarked and scorched worktable. She wiped her greasy hands on her greasy leather trousers and sighed. _Shoulda stuck with cooking._

But in her eleven months at Rauros Spaceport, she'd worked at--and had been fired from-- just about every tavern, pub, and eatery to be found among the slapdash buildings leaning on each other as if drunk, looming on either side of cobbled streets. She sighed again.  _Not_ my  _fault the good stuff's expensive and their cooks are idiots._  

It was either this or the brothels, and she'd be damned to the fiery demon-fucked pits of Hellebore's boiling moon before she'd let any man jam his waggling dick into her  _anytime soon._

Earlier today, the compensation for the past three weeks of toil under Perry's cloven-hoofed employ had walked in and not only bought parts from him, but  _stayed_ to talk long enough for her to get a  _good look_ at him, to match the visage with the stories.

She'd heard of Captain Long John Silver before, around the campfires. An Ursid cyborg pirate captain, the only man the vicious Captain Flint ever feared. Pirates, a danger enough to any small operation running a single ship, only got scarier when you added in the fact that surveying teams like her parents' routinely turned up entire planets' worth of riches: atmospheres made of molecules that could cure diseases, entire landmasses covered with rare spices or new food cultivars that could grow without gravity or light; diamonds and gems that fell from skies like rain; rocks seamed with vibranium. And this knowledge they transmitted on easily-hacked radio signals back to the Division. There was a reason why surveyors got paid so handsomely beyond what shares of their finds they kept.

But Captain Silver had not scared her; he had intrigued her. Especially after the story had broken that he'd  _found_  Flint's Trove, and had  _let it go_ to save a cabinboy's life. 

Cyborgs were common enough, if the traffic through Perry's bodyshop (Perry, a cyborg himself, sported a rickety spidery left hand) was any indication. But Ursids... _far_ rarer. The only other one she'd known was her father, and he was only half-Ursid. Her grandfather, full Ursid like Captain Silver, had died before she was born. Ursids themselves, her father had taught her, came from a small forest planet orbiting Vega that had been completely terraformed by the Confederation long ago, and in the process, had scattered the Ursids to the many winds.

She grabbed her heavy overcoat, a shabby, threadbare affair nicked from the bo'sun of the R.L.S.  _Ambrosia_ , and hurried out the back door of the bodyshop before her hairy boss could nose up a before-you-leave-this'll-only-take-a-tick.

Her feet turned her north to the tavern Captain Silver had mentioned, which happened to be, thank her lucky stars, owned by one of the few innkeepers that did not chase her out on the end of a meat cleaver. She stuck her hands into the deep pockets of the coat, its tails flapping about her ankles as she walked. The full-belly moon loomed into the sky and followed her through the winding alleys and wide boardwalks of the spaceport, built upon itself in orbit of the planet Opeth.

She stepped into the Two Tuns Tavern, and the drunken warmth, thick with the scent of tallow candles, pipesmoke and stale beer, hit her like a smack. It was late, even for the tavern-crows. Most had hauled themselves off to bed, and Bonnie felt a pang of disappointment.  _Shit, I've missed him._

"Hey, Bonnie, haven't seen you in a fair turn," the bartender piped up from the bar, tossing a dirt-smeared rag over her substantial shoulder. "Draw you an ale? Had a great passel of brutes in here earlier; they near cleaned me out. So you get the dregs. Sorry, love." Miarissy, a voluminous, ruddy woman deep of voice, expansive of figure and temperament and leonine of look, did not draw Bonnie's beer; instead she squeezed around the gap between bar and wall toward Bonnie.

Bonnie tossed a distracted smile back at Miarissy, scanning the place for Captain Silver. "No thanks. I'm just..."

She was suddenly taken in a fleshy, enveloping hug, smothered by the plentiful bosom Miarissy carried above her bodice. "Missed you, Squirt." 

"Mmmf," Bonnie said.

Miarissy dropped her arms and smiled, her whiskery muzzle crinkling up and her kind yellow eyes sparkling. She held Bonnie at arm's length, gazed at her. The smile faded. "Oh dear. You've got that look."

"What look?"

"That look you get when you're about to do something stupid."

Bonnie chuckled, most of her attention still on the sparsely-populated tavern. "I don't have that look."

"Yes you do. You had that same look when you decided to tear down the carving of the bossman's family because you thought the wood would flavor bison ribs well."

"And it did," Bonnie murmured, scanning the bar.

"What are you looking for?"

"Silver."

"Sorry, love, bossman says he won't hire you back."

Bonnie blinked. "Oh, not that kind of silver. I meant Captain Silver. I heard he was here."

Miarissy blinked now. "Why do you want _him_?"

Bonnie opened her mouth. Closed it again. "Wanted to meet him. Curious."

Miarissy sighed in a great, tidal rush. "You're a horrible liar, Eodana Mercatur." The towering woman pointed to the back of the tavern, to a wingback chair partially obscured by one of the wooden pillars holding up the multi-storied building. As Bonnie turned in that direction, Miarissy caught the oversized, flopping sleeve of her coat. Her slitted yellow eyes were flinty above the hard black line of her mouth. "Men like that run without knowing what they're running to or where they're running from. They sail into the dark places of the galaxy because they don't know to leave well enough alone. You make sure you come back from whatever wide, wild places he flings you. You hear me?"

Bonnie nodded. "Yes ma'am."

Miarissy released her sleeve, and she turned away from the massive woman without sentimentality. Bonnie knew, like Miarissy never would, that the calling in her bones was the call of those dark wilds, and it was  _she_  who would, and had, run toward the point of some inner compass that never stopped spinning. Bonnie understood, like Captain Silver did, the constant seeking of a light to cast into the darkness, a light to reflect some nameless and euphoric treasure buried, perhaps, in the deep, dark folds of the mind.

Bonnie approached Captain Silver's chair, which faced away from the main room and toward a fireplace in the corner, as quietly as her booted feet would allow. Resting on the arm of the chair was his metal arm, the outer panels catching orange firelight. Beyond that, the round slope of his belly. He did not turn. She crept around to the side of the chair and leaned into his vision, straightening when she caught his eye.

_Eyes._  The yellow bore of the cyborg eye she'd seen from a distance, but had never felt it _on_  her before. And she did feel it on her like a tiller, turning over the earth of her to expose the black secretive soil underneath. The pipe between his teeth glowed redly, casting a ruddy glow on his already ale-reddened cheeks and nose; lit a capering flame in his living eye. A quick, cold eel slithered up her spine. She cleared her throat and plastered on a guileless grin. "Cap'n John Silver? Can't mistake that mug. My name's Eodana Mercatur. But you can call me Bonnie." She dipped a quick curtsy with the tails of her coat, skirtless though she was. Rough ex-pirate though he was, she didn't think a little polite flattery would miss the mark. "Word around the docks is you're assembling a crew and shipping off soon. At the risk of imposing, I'd like to, ah, offer my services." 

He blinked his living eye, both scanning her _thoroughly._  It suddenly hit her how _big_  he was; even sitting he was not that much shorter than her. 

And she wasn't short. Though her mother had been small even for a human, she'd gotten enough length and breadth from her grandfather to grow her at least a head taller than many fully human women her age. Shaped like one but for a broadness to her nose, a thickness to her bones and a vague curl to her ears, she could pass for one, and did often. That was, of course, until she started winning arm-wrestling contests against cocky human spacermen. Of which there was  _no shortage_. But Captain John Silver, bigger than her by almost double, shrank her as much by his sheer presence as that tiny burning sun of an eye.

_Courage, Bonns, courage._  She cleared her throat again and tipped her chin up proudly. "I've been to almost every corner of the galaxy you can go, save for the Twin Keeps and Cygnus Cross. I don't know where you're going, but land on a planet and I can tell you what you can eat and what can kill you. What you can take to heal wounds and sickness, what you can drink and smoke and get high on. What people live where. What they'll do and say. I'm strong, and I'll work hard. I've been cooking most of my life, and I'm pretty good at it, if I say so myself." He didn't respond to her grin, and she wasn't sure if that was because of the drunk shining wetly in his living eye or because of the actual wheels turning in his head. She pressed on. "Before you ask, yes, I've been on a ship before; no, I don't mind a hard day's work; I'm older than I look; I'm a decentish shot with a laser pistol; and yes, I know who you are and what you've done. Even before you found Flint's Trove."

Her piece spoken, she stood under the piercing two-toned scrutiny of his gaze and waited.


	3. Cub (ravenousgrue)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.

He heard boots but he didn't move. If they were fool enough to approach the side of him that was all hard metal and sharp edges, they'd get what was coming to them. As it turned out, though,  _he_ was the fool. Just a girl. A fair one, and he saw enough Ursid in her to surprise him. His ( _their_ , he supposed) folk weren't especially common. It was rare enough to meet his own kind, and rarer _still_ to see one _diluted_. Less than half, at least.

Humans were so ruddy _small_ , but she had length of bone from a relative that he might've known at least tangentially. She was talking a lot, talking quick, trying to hustle him, trying to get herself a spot on a vessel that had long since been crewed.

John finished the dregs of his mug and set it aside, and then took a long and thoughtful draw on his pipe, watching her all the while. He could feel her squirm under his gaze -- mostly the synthetic eye made folks do the squirming, but he liked to think his own eye did a fair job. He blew a few rings of smoke before exhaling the rest through his nose and chuckled, relenting, letting her breathe.

"Quite a speech, _cub_ ," his speech was a little slurred, but he held his liquor well and he wanted her to know he saw a glimmer of kinship in her. That, and he was sitting. _Upright_ was going to be a challenge, but he wasn't worried about that now. He was comfortable and warm, and now he was _entertained_ , this pretty young thing flattering him, buttering him up so much he wondered if she'd try to crack his synthetic arm open to find the meat, "But I've got all sorts on me crew already, and they've got all that business covered. Not that I don't 'preciate the flattery -- _I do_! \-- but I've all I need already. Plenty of other folks hirin' crew, though. Maybe a bit more yer speed. You're so green I can see leaves sproutin' outta yer ears, cub, and I haven't the time or inclination t'keep ya watered and fed and outta trouble. We'll be gone half the year, maybe the _full_ year, and if you'll pardon my sayin' so, Miss, you look a little young t'be throwin' yer lot in with notorious pirates."

He didn't believe for a _second_ that she wasn't as young as she looked, although to be fair, everyone younger than him looked twenty these days.

John took another draw from his pipe and flashed her a gap-toothed grin.

"Miss. _Bonnie_ ," that name suited her very well, and it rolled off his tongue in a rumbling _purr_ , "I know the pirate's life seems real excitin', but it has it's downsides."

He ticked his metal hand against a metal thigh, raising his eyebrows.

"Ain't all of 'em _less_ than deadly, neither. Go on, now. Away with yeh." 


	4. Palaver (ahimsabitches)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.

 Bonnie huffed through her nose, taking a moment to place the tobacco in his pipe (longstem _Lobelia cardinalis_ , she guessed, and wondered if he actually _had_ syphilis or if he just smoked it for the high), and puffed her not-insubstantial chest out. _Cub._ Her Ursid genes had kept her face unlined and her skin unblemished much past the time when age would show on any other human. People took her for a neophyte _constantly_ , and it was a mistake she was both grateful for and annoyed by.

But _cub?_

"Didn't I _just_  say I'm older than I look? I'm kissing-cousins to fifty and that's all I'm going to tell _you,"_ she sassed, folding her arms over her chest. The soft but meaningful  _ticclicktictic_  of his cyborg parts against each other drew her eyes down. What were they? Steel? They didn't look crappy enough to be aluminum, and they didn't look good enough to be adamantium or vibranium. Maybe an alloy. A cheap alloy, by the dents and scratches on the outer plates of his arm and the nice little divot taken from the joint of his knee. There was doubtless a reason he hadn't updated the hardware in what looked to be many years, and she could think of several. Especially if he'd bought parts from Perry, whose license had run out decades ago and whose sparse ledgers were filled with "Client X" and "miscellaneous expense" and "dates unknown". When he chose to keep ledgers, that was.

 She liked his wide grin and liked more the way her name sounded in his tobacco-roughened rumble. His voice, deep and full and sonorous, tumbled in his chest like a slow landslide and she smiled unconsciously, encouraged by it and his attitude: not hostile and not fully guarded either. He was solidly drunk and indulging himself on her. Not taking her entirely seriously, she realized, but if negotiation failed, Plan B would be a cinch to pull off. Silver was charming, profoundly so, but he'd all but admitted his _own_ weakness for charm. Bonnie kept the wattage of her charm dim. For now.

She flapped her hand, waving away his warning like a fly. "All due respect, _Cap'n,_ I've seen my fair share of deadly work. Not as many shots to the head or knives in bellies, but when you're dropped onto the middle of a newly-discovered rainforest planet with nothing more than a single-page dossier and the words 'beware of sentient plant life', one learns new and exciting ways one can fuck up and _be_ fucked up.

"Speaking of that, I know you've traipsed the galaxy and what you haven't your crew has, but you're pirates. _Soft diplomacy_ isn't exactly your forte, if I may be so blunt. If you don't happen to have a Symphalian or a Turraton on your crew and you run into a ship full of them, you're going to _need_ some soft diplomacy-- and a translator-- or you're not going to have a chance. You've seen Turratons before, I take it. Three of you, twenty times meaner when provoked, and an unholy _pain_ to put down. One's awful, but two? A shipful? I saw a swift little schooner pull into port last week crewed by about ten of 'em, and her captain had Federation papers. Warrants. Bounty papers."

She let him absorb this.

"You know how difficult Turratons are to kill, but I don't bet you know that they're actually a bunch of stuffed shirts. Anything offends them. But as long as you're respectful and have good manners, they leave you alone. The Feds love them for that reason, because what kind of pirate would please-and-thank-you a Turraton coming to collect a bounty on them? Turratons have this sort of... ritual, this exchange of words, in their language, that's almost like an off-switch. Show deference and respect to a Turraton, and even if he's got orders for your head on a plate, he'll at least offer you a drink first. Give you enough time to run if you're smart or slip a knife under his carapace if you're a blazing idiot."

She realized she was rambling, but she enjoyed this kind of talk. A nebulous but powerful seeking of something pulled her on great yaws across the galaxy after she'd left her parents, but she enjoyed the hell out of the sights along the way. A thirst for knowledge nearly as powerful as the wanderlust had been in her since she was born; she remembered her father running his hands through his long brown hair and growling at her mother. _If that cub asks me_ why _one more time I'm gonna lob 'er into a cruzzard nest_. They'd both taught her how to use her eyes and ears, her nose, her gut, her curiosity, and her common sense to help her move through the world with unclouded eyes and an open mind, and seeking out other people who did the same was part of the fun. She didn't know if Silver was such a man; pirates-- _men_ \-- tended not to be. But at least they had stories, truthful or not, and she _always_ learned something.

"I'm _not_ green, and you won't have to keep me fed and watered. I'm perfectly capable of doing that on my own. In fact, I'm perfectly capable of keeping  _all_ of you fed and watered. In spades. Like I said before, I've been responsible for feeding a crew of large surly men for most of my life, and I doubt whatever prepubescent pot-stirrer of a cabinboy you're calling cook could manage. He'd waste precious inventory. He'd not know what to buy and how much of it to buy with the budget you give him. He'd not know which foods are both cheap and good and which ports to find them at, and he'd _certainly_ not know how to keep the crew healthy beyond just full bellies. A tight ship isn't a happy ship, Cap'n; a well-fed and healthy one is."

She flicked her eyes down to the domed expanse of his belly. Back up to his face. "But I think you already know that."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ursid lifespans are around twice as long as human lifespans; counting for the mix of Ursid and human in her, Bonnie looks mid-twenties and would be around her early thirties if she were fully human.


	5. Deal (ravenousgrue)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.

He'd turned his eyes back to the fire after he'd told her to _git_ , fully expecting her to comply, but she was too determined for that and he _really_ should have known. Even half or _quarter_ Ursid, she didn't let go of something she wanted easily, and he listened to her with a bemused and indulgent expression, more focused on _her_ than her actual words. The only thing he outwardly reacted to was her age, the statement making him look her up and down again. Old for a human, still a _cub_ to him, but not quite as much of one as he'd originally thought.

What she was saying about Turratons wasn't _wrong,_ but he had his _own_ charm if he did say so himself. He wouldn't have survived this long not knowing how to deal with troublesome, finicky aliens, and he'd gone for a fast ship over a heavily armed one. Unlike most pirates, he didn't have much of a thirst for killing. None at all, really. He'd done it plenty, done what he'd had to do, but he avoided excess bloodshed whenever possible.

She was passionate about joining the crew, he could see that. Could see that glimmer in her eye, one he knew he got himself, one most people in his _line of work_ recognized and understood. She just wanted to see what there was to see, and she wanted to because she _could_. He was strongly reminded of himself as a young man, slithering his way onto ships he had no business being on, working his way up from cook. Normally he didn't let sentimentality drive how he picked crew -- in that, he was a strict pragmatist -- but he was drunk and she was pretty, and her fire was even warmer than the one in the hearth.

Silver blinked when she started in on the _cooking_ and he let out a deep belly laugh when she made her final point, patting his conspicuous middle with his good hand and shaking his head. Well, she had him there, didn't she? He was a bloody good cook himself, but unlike his last voyage, he wouldn't have the free time to enjoy his hobbies. Captain was a big responsibility, and he took it very seriously even if he didn't let on. He didn't like losing crew to bad planning.

"I'll tell ya what, _cub_ ," now he was teasing and he shifted his weight in the chair, making it creak very, _very_ ominously, and making him freeze in place a moment, hands braced on the arms like he expected it to give out. It wasn't exactly rated for full-grown Ursid, but it somehow held, and he pressed on, "You go on in back there and make me somethin', whatever ya like, yer best dish if'n they got the ingredients, and if I like it, yer hired. If anyone complains you send 'em t' _me_ ," his smirk suggested that he wasn't the _least_ bit ashamed of using the notoriety of his name for intimidation purposes, "I'll set 'em straight."

John shifted his pipe to his cybernetic hand and wiped his original one off on his shirt before offering it to her, his expression sly.

"If I don't like it you scurry off to bed without another _word_ ," he said, "If I _do_ , I'll see you at the docks in the mornin'. Deal?"

He'd _more_ than eaten ( _and_ drank) his fill this evening, but he always had room for a _little_ more. That, and he couldn't think of a better cap to an evening than a pretty young thing _cooking_ for him, but she'd probably figured that when she'd made such a fuss about how good a cook she was. A well-run galley made for a happy crew, he knew that very well, and the young lad that'd signed on as cabin boy... well. John had been preparing for long months of ill-prepared grub while the lad tried to learn, and his sort weren't known for hearty meals.


	6. Backpedal (ahimsabitches)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.

Oh _shit._

Her entire body _sank_ when he gave her his test.

If this were any other pub owned by _any other innkeeper,_ even one of the ones that _would_ chase her out with a butcher knife, she'd be back in the kitchen in a heartbeat, and the bossman would have to answer to Silver.

But she'd brought up Turratons because they'd been at the front of her mind. One owned this pub-- she could hear his heavy clattery footfalls in the direction of his office--and it was only by the grace of her knowing the ritual she'd told Silver about that she stood where she stood. Gangranuis had told her, in his strangely guttural, bubbly language, _You may patronize my inn and visit your friend, but set foot into that kitchen again and there will be no fire hot enough to burn my vengeance from your bones._

She wanted a spot on Silver's crew, but there was _no way_ , she thought as she flipped through the catalog of ways this could end, that she'd get it if she stepped through that door to her former boss' wrath. Her mouth snapped shut with an audible click of teeth and she sucked a breath in between her teeth. "That's... er... I, um...that might...not be the best idea. See, I used to work here, and, er... I no _longer_ work here because...ah..." She trailed off, running a hand through her redbrown hair, already growing in from the last time she'd shorn it several weeks ago. Her mind whirred, seized on an idea. "Wouldn't it be better for us to go to your ship? It wouldn't be a fair representation of my abilities here anyway, 'cause that kitchen has a lot more than a ship's galley would, y'know, and I don't want to falsely advertise, after all...I'll replace whatever I use, a'course, from my own pocket."

Watching the mirth slip out of Silver's living eye, she sighed. She'd rather not have to use Plan B, because deceiving a notoriously fearsome pirate captain and most likely provoking his wrath, which she could imagine being reasonably close to a Turraton's, just to be stuck with him for upwards of a year, wasn't an especially _wise_ course of action.

But she'd made stupider decisions and come out alive, if not entirely whole, plenty of times before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I imagine Turratons to be giant shelled beetle-like creatures with beaks like squids and massive mandibles on either side of these like ants. They have carapaces like turtles but walk on six thickened, hairy beetle legs that end in a two-toed "foot" with a single claw like a raptor claw. They have two pairs of compound eyes. The females are larger than the males and usually are not seen because they're too big to move through most environments sized for the majority of the population. They are usually iridescent black but some males sport streaks of blue and green on their carapaces. This is a relatively recent development in their evolution, and nobody quite knows why, because the females tend not to give a shit about much else other than their creches and each other.


	7. A Production (ravenousgrue)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.

He'd _liked_ their back and forth but now she was stammering and stumbling, and he didn't hide how _unimpressed_ he was, his good eye hooding, his lips pulling down into a disappointed frown. All _talk_ then, was she? She was still wheeling and dealing, but he'd managed to throw her, and now he was wondering if maybe he was too drunk to notice something obvious, something he'd see plain as day sober and feel like a fool for letting it slip past.

"Not exactly a glowin' recommendation for ya, lass, if'n ya can't even work a _tavern_ without runnin' inta trouble," he said, making sure they were on the same page when it came to how he was feeling about her joining his crew, "I don't need  _trouble_. I'll have plenty of it out there without havin' to worry 'bout it on me ship."

He gave her a hard, appraising look, closing his cybernetic eye to focus better, but he was just a hair too inebriated to pick up on anything besides what was obvious. 

And now he was _hungry_.

" _All right_ ," he said. He needed to get back to the ship anyhow, and it'd be easier to do it if he wasn't stuffed with another meal, "Give a feller some room, cub. It's a bit of a _production_."

He heaved himself up out of the chair in one powerful motion, overdid it, stumbled, and caught one hand on the hearth, the other splaying out for balance. Once his head was done swimming he eased his weight off the hearth and onto his cybernetic leg first, and then his factory standard. He wobbled, but his balance held.

" _Right_ ," he sniffed and gave his coat an exaggerated _straightening_ and started for the door. Even though he was limping, his strides were long and reasonably steady. Being drunk was an important pirate skill, after all, "C'mon then, stay close. We ain't docked far from here."

For pretty much the situation he was in now, very drunk and in no condition to wind his way through the streets without getting distracted. He'd gone for an inconspicuous dock behind the tavern, in fact, wanting to draw as little attention to their expedition as possible. The ship looked worn in and he stumped down the dock and up the ramp, giving a nod to some of the lads on deck doing some final work on the rigging. They were grinning and elbowing each other, misreading _entirely_ the reason their Captain might be leading a young woman onto the ship late at night.

Silver was focused, however, leading her down into the galley, not giving her time to gawk or ask questions. Since it was his ship, he'd made sure the galley was well stocked _himself_ , both in materials and equipment. She'd have no excuses now, so if she balked again, he wouldn't hear another ruddy word.

John dragged a chair near the entrance to the galley and sat down with a loud grunt, gesturing into what ostensibly be her place of business for the next little while. Assuming she could actually do what she said she could.

"Hop to it, cub."

He crossed his arms over his chest, resting them on his belly, intent on spotting any foul play if it was there to spot.


	8. Chef (ahimsabitches)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.

Drunk or not, he had good points. Her mother had called her persistent. Her father had said stubborn. Her employers had bellowed/squealed/screamed verdicts ranging from _Miss Mercatur doesn't follow directions well_ to _This is the most bullheaded, insolent wench I have ever had the misfortune of clapping my eyes on._

Wasn't _her_ fault none of them had any imagination and wasted good balsamwood on _carvings_.

But Silver didn't know that, and she doubted she'd have a chance to explain herself. She braced herself for a hearty _fuck off_ in one set of words or another, but then he said _all right_ in the same fine-you-win tone her parents used and her face opened in genuine _shock_.

Before she could process anything else, he stood. She stepped back to give him room, then almost _lunged_ forward to catch him when he stumbled. She bit off the head of a laugh at her own foolishness. The great and fearsome Captain John Silver leaned on the hearth, swaying and blinking, and the laugh came out anyway as a snorted giggle. She bit her lip and darted her eyes up to his, but he hadn't seemed to hear her.

She followed him obediently, chuckling through a bitten lip. Miarissy's yellow, hooded gaze followed them out the door despite Bonnie's grinning double thumbs-up.

Once they were on the cobbles, Silver's uneven strides leveled, which struck her. Usually the lumpy stones threw even sober spacers off, even landlocked ones who hadn't just spent months having the ground heave and sway beneath them. She followed the broad coated wall of his back, rocking subtly back and forth like a ship, through the foul-smelling alley next to the building. The alley spit them out onto a small dock behind the tavern she hadn't known was there. There were only two berths, and only one was occupied. The ship, what little she could see of it in the dingy lamplight, was small. Two masts, the foremast a sight taller than the mizzen. A ketch, shallow-hulled, light and quick. Her sails were furled, but it looked like there was a full set: mainsail, mizzen, two fores, topsails on both fore and mizzen masts. Two yardarms, a rigged jib and bowsprit. They were either going a _long_ way away, or they needed to get where they were going _fast_. Perhaps both.

She didn't see any afterburners on the rudder or any indications that the ship had a deep space drive; she'd have been genuinely _nervous_ if it had. A small ketch like this was built for speed and stealth, not for the _rigors_ of sailing beyond the galaxy.

As she stepped onto the deck, a cool shiver went through her, quick as the slip of a silverfish, its bulging black eye locking with hers for an instant. She glanced around but didn't have time to see much but deck, mast, tiller, crew (turns out there _was_ a Symphalian on board; he eyed her and clacked his beak) before Silver led her down the steep creaky stairs to the galley.

The image of the fisheye stayed like an afterimage, as if etched onto the inside of her skull.

Her galley-- she already thought of it as hers-- was set up like most other ships' galleys, just sized down from the frigates and dreadnoughts she was used to stowing away on: several rows of benches in front of a horseshoe-shaped kitchen, a decent-sized circular firepit/stove assembly in the middle under a great steel rack of pots, pans, bowls, sheets, and utensils. Below was a grated floor covered with pressed rock wool mats. Fireproof and slip-proof. She smiled. So far so good. She glanced back at him, waiting for him to set her loose. He did. She shrugged out of her coat and tossed it on a bench, rolled up the sleeves of her greasy shirt to the shoulder, and stepped into her kitchen.

Spices in this cabinet. Good ones, too, all labeled. Cardamon, white pepper!, turmeric, yes, yes, sage, saffron, cinnamon, curry, rosemary... she stood on her tiptoes, leaning over the sink, half into the cabinet itself.

"Bloody hell, you got _ghost chiles_ ," she yipped and held up a small stoppered bottle with three shriveled crimson things that looked like the devil's severed fingers. Grinning, she set the bottle aside. "Oh, I am _so_ using one of these," she murmured to herself, then, louder, to Silver, she said, "I'll replace what I use!" Then, softer again, to herself, "I hope." Not many shops selling something as exotic as bhut jolokia at this port, and what few that did, she imagined, would charge dearly.

But it would be worth it when Silver tasted what she was going to prepare for him.

She cut her giddy inventory of her kitchen short when she heard Silver's living foot tapping on the planks.

For all the broken flotsam and jetsam of her life with her parents and all the abortive attempts at working a steady job at the port, moving through a kitchen was like coming home. Flaring fire, glittering steel, the rolling sounds of boiling and the unsteady hiss of sizzling were her friends and they did not threaten; they were her tools and she was theirs and they worked in economical, pragmatic grace.

Though Bonnie was the only one cooking, soon the kitchen was alive with blended sound and smell. She didn't say anything else to Silver about what she was preparing for him. He was both an observant man and an Ursid; what he couldn't see he could sniff out. He'd cocked a suspicious eyebrow when she'd victoriously brought out a bison leg but said nothing.

There was a grin on her lips, a shine in her green eyes, and a hum in her throat as she plated Silver's meal: marinated braised bison (he had no balsamwood for the oven but she forgave him), roasted yams with a dash of cinnamon and orange juice, and bok choy sauteed in garlic and the rest of the marinade. She didn't ask how his tolerance for spice was; he had the ghost chiles in the first place and he was an Ursid to boot. Her own mouth was still sizzling from the test tastes she'd taken as she cooked, but the burn was sweet. 

She filled a tankard with water and grabbed a knife and fork on her way to where Silver sat and set then all down in front of him without flourish, preferring to let the food speak for itself. That was another good part of being a cook: you didn't have to do much _doing;_ the food did all the work and you just sat back and watched the friends and favors roll in. 

Which is precisely what she did; she busied herself in cleaning up the kitchen while he ate, keeping a curled, fuzzy ear out for either praise or damnation.


	9. Interview (ravenousgrue)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No warnings. 
> 
> So sorry this was a day late! I had come down with The Plague a few days ago and am just now able to be vertical without crushing waves of nausea! I appreciate your patience!

He watched her work like a hawk, glad for something to focus on. Between a big meal, ale, the late hour and his pipe he was being tugged more and more steadily to _sleep_. Or he had been, until he'd had something to actually think about that wasn't idle woolgathering.

Expecting that she'd be falling flat on her face in a moment, he was surprised by how deft she was once she really got going, moving through the kitchen like she'd been _born_ into it. She was part Ursid, after all. In a way, she _had_ been.

After his initial reaction he made it a point to stay neutral, not giving her a hint one way or another what he thought. Some of her techniques he was skeptical on, but he'd taste for himself if they were better than his own or not. She set the plate in front of him and he gave her a measured look before he took a good swallow of water, getting the bitter remnants of ale and pipe out of his mouth. He gave the plate a more intimate sniff, making a real show of inspecting how she'd plated it even though he'd only just watched her do it. 

Finally, he tasted the bison and closed his eyes, his expression pained. Heaven help him, he didn't think he could pretend he didn't like it. It was absolutely _glorious_ , even better than it smelled, and he ate a few more bites before he gestured for her to sit down across from him, shaking his head at her while he chewed. She'd talked herself on the ship, a feat all on its own, and after all that stammering, she was brilliant. He'd be annoyed if he wasn't so impressed with her guts.

"Any outstandin' warrants on ya that ya know about?" he asked her between bites, determined to clear his plate despite his stomach's protests, "Bounties? Grudges? No rich parents showin' up in Naval cruisers claimin' you've been kidnapped?"

He hadn't said yes _yet_ , but she'd definitely advanced to the next phase of the interview: _was she more trouble than she was worth?_

"An' the most _important_ thing I need t'know, Bonnie, and th' _only_ thing I expect ya t'be _honest_ about," he paused to eat another bite and then wagged the fork in her direction, " _Can ya follow orders without backtalk?_ I'm not easy on my crew, and if'n yer gonna give me _lip_ every step of the way you'll find that sass _ill-received_. I'm not above stowin' sass-mouths in the brig 'til we find a place to drop 'em off, return ticket not ruddy guaranteed. Y'don't get a free pass t'argue with yer Captain just because yer prettier than he is."

Even though she'd talked her way onto the ship and he was clearly indulging her, he wanted it to be _clear_ that there was a dividing line. There was himself, John Silver, a man who liked pretty girls and warm meals, and there was Captain Silver, a man with _absolute_ authority. This was _his_ ship, _his_ crew, and if she thought she could hold herself above all of that -- he purposefully didn't ask after her work history after her stumble in the tavern, certain he could fill in the rest without being told -- she was going to be _sorely_ mistaken.

"Where we're goin' is _dangerous_ , lass," he said, his expression very grim, very stern now, "It's not a _lark_. Followin' my orders might be life n'death, an' if you don't reckon you can handle that, don't be selfish enough to put the rest of us in danger t'indulge yer wanderlust."

He didn't think she was going to be dissuaded, but he wanted her to know his misgivings. John preferred people knew where they stood with him. No mysteries here: he was intrigued, but he didn't entirely trust her motivation. She hadn't shook on the deal and so he'd feel no guilt in rejecting her if she responded in a way that gave him a bad feeling, but if she could impress him one more time, he didn't think he'd have it in him to turn her down.


	10. Swear (ahimsabitches)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.

She was so distracted by the bliss on his face that he was trying _so valiantly_  to hide that she almost tipped the stockpot she was cleaning to the floor. When he beckoned her over she almost bounced, plunking happily into her seat and failing utterly at hiding her own glee. It was partly for the place on Silver's crew that was all but assured and partly the simple, honest joy of making something that brought happiness, however small, to someone else.

His eyes hardened and she knew they were _dealing_  now.

"No, none of that," she said solemnly, giving their conversation its due gravity. "My parents don't know where I am, but if they haven't come looking for me in sixteen years, I don't think they'll suddenly start now."

She gritted her teeth against a bitter pang and felt the fisheyed presence of...someone? some _thing?_ on her, _in her,_ like an eel nosing through the deep folds of her brain. The feathery hairs on the back of her neck prickled. She turned, but there was, of course, no one in the kitchen but the two of them. She blinked and opened her mouth to ask Silver if he felt anything, but he spoke first, asking her if she could _follow orders_.

"Yessir," she said without hesitation, without lie. There was a big difference between an order to furl a sail and an order to _only_  use the saffron if a customer asked for it. She _would_ follow his orders as they pertained to her job as crew member, as they pertained to the survival of the ship, the crew, him, and her. As they pertained to the success of whatever mission they were under and the safe return of all parties. If that was part of the bargain. He knew ships and sailing better than she did, so she had no basis to sass him.

Cooking, however...

He was an Ursid, though, she mused as she studied the shape of him, both deeply familiar and strange, and the interplay of ruddy lamplight and shadow over his craggy, lined face. It was a face in front of a mind that had seen its share of bad weather, both internal and external. Her eyes lingered on the gears on the right side of his head, clicking and turning. There was no discernable pattern to them but she listened for one anyway; listened to the quiet morse code of them, trying to decode the clicks and whirrs into linear thought. She longed to get behind that cyborg eye, to hear the great swells and tides of his life straight from the source. The stories from other mouths had been conflicting and piecemeal and had only made her _more_ curious about him.  

"I swear on my life I'll follow your orders, Cap'n," she leaned forward, suddenly aware that he'd had her pegged when he'd mentioned wanderlust, and suddenly _very eager_  to please him. "Even if all the horrible stories about you aren't true, I get the feeling this venture isn't just a jaunt to Aldebaran and back," she said, thinking of the fisheye. She glanced around again, drawing her shoulders in slightly, but they were alone in the galley. She hoped.

"Where _are_ we going, anyway?"


	11. Grim (ravenousgrue)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.

The way she said _yessir_ convinced wholesale, but he didn't let on, focused on polishing off every _bit_ of what had been set in front of him, suppressing a mild groan of discomfort and leaning back in his seat some. Had he been in more casual company he would've undone his belt, but he didn't want to give her the wrong idea. She was pretty and she'd probably noticed him noticing that she was, and it'd be hard enough being the only woman on board without him making her uncomfortable. He did attempt, in vain, to adjust the belt at least, but if a little discomfort was enough to throw him off his game he wouldn't be Captain.

She was unsettled by something, and he knew what it was. It'd taken him a few _weeks_ to get used to the ominous presence of Mr. Grim, who reassured him and the crew many times over that they would adjust. And they all had, more or less. Sometimes, if he was alone, John looked over his shoulder, certain someone was there but always met with nothing. He couldn't imagine an entire species climbing around in each others heads and he took care not to try. Gave him the willies enough as it was just having one to deal with.

He was a strange one, Mr. Grim, and he didn't doubt that what he was up to was strange, but not only had he not seemed to really know who John _was_ , he had entrusted him _entirely_ with the assembly of the crew, claiming he needed no input at all. Very, _very_ unheard of for a financier of his caliber. 

Silver grinned when she leaned in. He would've leaned in too if his stomach wasn't struggling valiantly to handle a whole day of carrying on like he was on extended shore leave.

"We're headin' through the Expanse," he told her. Whatever had happened to her to estrange her from her parents, whatever it was that caused her to get banned from a tavern's kitchen, he could appreciate a kindred spirit when he met one. He made it a point to crew his ship with her sort (and _his_ ) exclusively, "All the way to the end of the spiral arm. Got a feller from the _Andromeda_ galaxy footin' th'bill."

He could tell she didn't believe him, and as he opened his mouth to _insist_ , his entire body jolted. One moment it had been just them, but Mr. Grim must've slipped in when he'd blinked. John laughed (a bit more nervously that he would've liked) and gestured to him, "Well, speak'a the Devil. Bonnie, this is our financier, Mr. Grim. Mr. Grim, Bonnie here is our new cook."

How Mr. Grim would appreciate her cooking was unclear since his face, such as it was, was just a flat charcoal grey expanse, no contours at all, smooth and mottled with even darker grey. It looked almost black in the low galley light.

**_Hello, Bonnie_** , Mr. Grim's voice filled the room, and even though he was rail thin, he was taller than the Captain was, his clothing made of a strange white material that seemed vaguely iridescent even on the low light, **_Welcome aboard._**

"I know it's a bit of a last minute addition," John said, apologetic but not deferential. Maybe he was paying for it, but it was  _John's_ ship. Damned if the bastard wasn't _unnerving_ , though. Sometimes he was _sure_ he could feel him rifling around in his head, but he had no idea to what end, "But she's older'n she looks an' her cookin'd give mum a run fer her money. It'd do the crew good t'have her aboard."

Compliments for her but directed to Mr. Grim, if only to distract her from staring. To put her at some kind of ease.

**_I'm looking for mineral deposits and hoping to make a colony claim_** , Mr. Grim's 'voice' was very gentle, almost like he was whispering into her ear despite him being across the room, but there was an odd _rehearsed_ quality to it, like he was reading his words from a script. Even though he had no eyes, it felt like a million of them were boring into her for just a moment before he said, _ **She seems very trustworthy. You're an excellent judge of character, Captain. I'm not certain how you do it, handicapped as you are.**_

Meaning that he wasn't telepathic or telekinetic or whatever the bloody word was for being an unsettling inter-galactic traveler. John smirked and shrugged his shoulders.

"I get by," he said, clearly happy to let the odd statement slide, "Anyhow, Bonnie, we're shovin' off at 0800, and we won't be waitin' if y'decide 0804 is more t'yer tastes. Can I count on seein' yah?"

He stuck his left hand out to shake, purposefully not giving her much of a chance to say much. If she couldn't swallow Mr. Grim _now_ , Mr. Grim who seemed bemused by weapons and spent most of his time _lurking_ , she was free to change her mind.

Mr. Grim tilted his plain, oblong head as though he were observing something very quaint and fascinating. He did not fidget, did not shift his weight, didn't even scratch an itch, perfectly still besides the brief tilt of his head.


	12. Hired (ahimsabitches)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.

She had just enough time to take in the words _Expanse_ \-- thrilling, frightening-- and _Andromeda--_ a buzz of questions-- and then she was _hit_ from the _inside_ by an incorporeal fist, a _force_ , and for a moment the fisheye was in front of her, bright and black and shimmering, burning into the space between her eyes. She jerked involuntarily and went rigid on the bench, eyes and mouth in wide, surprised Os.

Eyes, oh, _eyes,_  and suddenly Silver's laser eye was _blind_ and she was blind too and pinioned like a butterfly on a board and it was hard to _breathe_ and the mind in her was not hers; it was someone else's and she felt it slip through her, oh, soft as a lover, cold and black like silt on a riverbed, and she knew whatever it was, whatever force held her, could grip if it wanted, tear if it wanted, rend her mind into tatters and there was absolutely _nothing_ she could do to stop it. 

_**Hello, Bonnie. Welcome aboard.**_ The voice filled her head, filled _her,_  seemed to vibrate in every hollow place. It poured through her, rich like wine and quiet like sleep, and she was calmed despite herself. She let out the breath she was holding.  _ **Don't be afraid. I won't harm you.**_ This time the voice did not fill her; merely trickled into her mind. Like a private frequency on a radio transmission. 

She blinked at the man-- person?-- _thing?_ standing at the base of the galley stairs. She knew without knowing that he-- it? was the origin of the voice in her head. He-- it? reminded her of a silver spoon in a white coat, faceless oval head topping a stalk of neck that blended, rather unnervingly, into a body barely a handsbreadth wider. There was a sense of motion about him though the stood inhumanly still. Silver was talking, but she could not tear her eyes, her mind, her _being,_ away from the creature across the room but so _very_ close.

_Telepath,_ she thought incredulously. _It's a telepath. I've heard stories, but...nobody's ever..._

**_I'm looking for mineral deposits and hoping to make a colony claim_ ,** he said, the mind-voice vibrating in her, on the shared frequency. Then, on the frequency only meant for her, he said ** _Quite correct. It seems your mind is a bit more receptive than our dear friend John's._** Then, on the shared frequency,  _ **She seems very trustworthy. You're an excellent judge of character, Captain. I'm not certain how you do it, handicapped as you are.**_ Then, on the private frequency,  _ **Unfortunately telepathy isn't a skill one can learn in the span of this voyage, perhaps ever, but you've a mindsoil rich and fertile. If it can be done, I shall delight in helping you cultivate this most fruitful ability as long as we're together. Should you choose it.**_

She was released. The telepath's presence slipped from her; though he remained standing at the base of the stairs, Bonnie was able to refocus on the world outside her mind, inside her sphere of knowing. She blinked at Silver, who had his left hand out and was asking her to report at oh-eight-hundred. She glanced over Silver's shoulder at the spoon-thing. It stayed out of her head. Suddenly Silver's laser eye seemed _much_ more natural. 

Her right hand rose automatically, but she caught herself and took his left in a grip that was firm and a little awkward. His hand swallowed hers, and it was warm and calloused. The firmness of it, the _thereness_ of it, comforted her more than she'd known she wanted to be comforted, and she smiled. "I'll be there," she said, her voice dry and rusty, as if she hadn't used it in a long time. "If you don't mind, Cap'n, Mister Grim," she said as she rose a little shakily, "I'd like to go back and pack. I'll finish cleaning up the kitchen tomorrow morning."

Without waiting for an answer from either of them, she strode quickly out of the galley (skin crawling when she passed Mr Grim), up the stairs and off the ship, her mind in a whirl.

She thought of the fisheye as she unlocked the door to her rooms on the second floor of Perry's bodyshop. She thought of the Expanse as she pulled out her knapsack and began packing. She thought of Silver, both like and unlike what she'd expected him to be, as she scrubbed herself clean in the grubby, ringed tub she shared with Perry and his wife. She thought of Perry, whom she'd have to tell that she'd accepted another job, as she dressed. She chose the cleanest, newest clothes she had, knowing that she'd be wearing them with little chance for washing or changing for the better part of a year: thick brown cargo pants with plenty of pockets, her least-worn boots, a loose white shirt with a deep V cut in the neck and a drawstring to open or close the V depending on how much _persuasion_ she needed; hopefully none now that the hard work of securing a place on Silver's crew was done. To that end, she wrapped a wide band of cloth around her chest under her shirt to flatten her breasts as much as they could be flattened. Now that she no longer depended on tips from drunk spacers, and now that she would be stuck with several men in close quarters for a good year, function overruled form.

By the time she was done packing, Perry and his wife were awake and thumping around in the kitchen. She walked in, fully dressed, and told them about her new job. Bonita smiled sadly and slipped a small pouch of coins into her hand. Perry snorted at her on her way out, hands on his flabby hips. "Hope y'make a better spacer than a welder," he grunted. 

"Me too," she called back and stepped out into the early morning gloom, into the rattle of shop windows as they opened.

Now that she had more money, she felt no compunctions about lighting up a joint of sativa and savoring it as she shopped for replacements for Silver's inventory, and a few other things for herself to fill the gaps that were appreciatively small. Her last stop was to Seur, the saturnine human proprietor of the herb shop from which she both bought and sold. The sun had just cleared the horizon of the planet in whose gravity the spaceport sheltered, and the port was awash in the crystalline yellow-white light of morning. That, coupled with the calming but uplifting affects of the herb, put her in a better mood and threw Mr Grim and his eyes to the back of her mind. 

She used the last of her money and time at Seur's and trotted hastily back toward the ship. Silver had said 0800, but she wanted to be there at 0700 so she could get the kitchen shipshape before the launch. Her footsteps slowed on the plank, waiting for the fisheye to lens on her, waiting for Mr Grim's velvety voice, but neither came. She nodded wordlessly to the other crew on her way to the galley, who blinked at her. Doubtless they'd thought she was a whore Silver had brought for his last night. She would let it be. They'd figure out soon enough that she was crew when and if Silver called all hands to help with the launch. If not then, they'd definitely figure out who she was at the dinner bell. 

The galley was as she'd left it last night, sans-Silver and, thankfully, sans-Mr Grim. She unloaded the food from her knapsack and fell into the pleasant bustle of making the kitchen hers.


	13. Barkly (ravenousgrue)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings. Sorry this is a day late!

She wasn't alone in the galley long, the footsteps coming down the stairs light and graceful, not a drag or hitch to be heard in their step. The owner was a stocky-looking Felid with jet black fur and yellow eyes, his muzzle peppered with grey. He felt his age a bit more keenly than the Captain did, and he was dressed more conservatively, more like a Navy man than a pirate.

"You must be Bonnie," he said, coming to a stop in the entrance of the galley but not encroaching on territory that wasn't his, "I'm First Mate Barkly," he _almost_ smirked after saying his name, but couldn't seem to find the gumption, "Just letting the crew know the Cap'n wants all hands on deck in twenty minutes or so. You'll hear him bellowing, I'm sure."

He caught his hands behind his back and peered at her intently, his yellow eyes stark against his dark, sleek fur. _She was part Ursid_. The Captain had let that little detail _slide_ when he'd offhandedly let Barkly know about their final crewman. For all his carousing, though, he knew Silver didn't hire folks based on how much he wanted to bed them -- if she was part of the crew it was because she deserved to be. He trusted Silver with his life a thousand times over, and he wasn't about to start questioning him now.

_Still_. Of all the cooks in the spaceport, he'd managed to find a pretty young Ursid girl. The man had real talent.

"Young Mr. Grey will be happy not to have the crew breathing down his neck about meals," he said, finally smiling, "Welcome aboard, Miss Bonnie. If you've friends or family to say goodbye to, you ought to hop to it now. The Cap'n's been itching to go since he woke up - he and Mr. Grim are finalizing our course now. The first few weeks we'll be in charted territory so you can plan your meals and the supplies you need like you normally might until then."

He was deeply curious about her and he lingered in the galley entrance way, watching her, trying to puzzle her out.

"Anything I can help you with?" he asked, certain his curiosity was transparent and not at all concerned. He'd had a few weeks to get to know the crew, but Bonnie was a mystery to him, and he didn't like wildcards.


	14. Felid (ahimsabitches)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.

Bonnie's focus on the stove, making sure the pilot lights were as low as she could get them without going out, was so great that she didn't hear the owner of the voice until it spoke. She spun around and froze. A Naval officer!

She relaxed when she realized his coat, a shabby handmedown, had been stripped of the epaulets, gold braiding, gold buttons and embroidered decorations on the arms that denoted station and rank. She met the Felid's slitted yellow eyes, set in a sober, pointed salt-and-pepper face. He introduced himself as First Mate Barkly, and she cocked a grin, appraising him.

Pirates sometimes dressed to _impress,_ in flashy coats, velvet and corduroy trousers and vests in eye-searing colors, feathered hats as big around as they were tall, and boots so often spitshined by unfortunate prisoners or cabinboys that if one was especially vain, like these pirates tended to be, one could see one's distorted reflection in them. But most pirates, this crew included, dressed in an economical hodgepodge of old and stolen clothes, particolored with patches but muted by wear and time. Barkly dressed like neither. He was well put-together. His sand-colored trousers fit him well, and the white stockings below them lacked holes.

Posture rigorously good, curiosity well-contained, voice scrupulously accent-less, he was, Bonnie mused, very much Felid. Took himself _much_  too seriously.

She dipped a curtsy in acknowledgement of his welcome, grin widening to compensate for his own spare smile, as if his face only stretched so far. She liked him already. "Thankee for the notice, Mister Barkly. That helps."

And it did. All she knew was that they were going to cross the Expanse, and she had been wrestling with how to ask her new captain what their course was. She figured the crew, especially crew not on deck (her), would be on a strict need-to-know basis about the nature of their voyage. Mr Grim didn't seem the particularly _sharing_ type. 

Now she could plan and budget and prepare. The Expanse was, well, just that: an as-yet incompletely charted smear of deep-vacuum emptiness, a curious blank space, as if someone had ripped a bandage off a section of the galaxy's spiral arm and left it bald and smooth and featureless. Her parents had sailed them into it once on orders and once on her mother's dogged curiosity. The first time they'd only spent ten days hurling themselves as fast as they could through a small corner of the deep cold oblivion, and her father had broken down a stateroom door and found their anatomist-medic halfway through his own lobotomy, one eye rolled back in his head and blood pouring in maroon sheets over his face. The second time, the crew had spent a haunted, hunted six days constantly looking over their shoulders, hearing every horror in the black, screaming silence. They'd turned back. Nobody died that time, but the bo'sun and their geologist had gone AWOL at the next port of call.

She assumed that whatever lay beyond the Expanse was what Mr Grim wanted to find. Mineral deposits, he'd said. Most likely vibranium, rare but mind-blowingly versatile and _expensive._ But a colony claim? Nobody knew the length and breadth of the Expanse. Even if Mr Grim and Silver could prove the Expanse treadable and mappable, which would be a feat in itself, how could Mr Grim _possibly_  convince any refugee, wanderer, even fugitive to willingly traipse across it? 

_He's a telepath, remember,_ she thought. _He can probably make anybody do whatever he wants them to. Even step off the bowsprit._

She shuddered and turned back to the stove... and felt a pair of eyes on her. Not the crawling myriad of Mr Grim's fisheye, but Mr Barkly's piqued yellow gaze. She peered back at him but felt no malice, only curiosity. "Yessir, there _is_  something you can help me with, if you like. I want to move these barrels out of the main area here and back into that storeroom." She indicated both with a pointed finger. He inclined his head and bent to the task with smooth obedience, as if she were the first mate and he the cook. As they hauled barrels, the first impression of him in the soft clay of her mind firmed. He was another of the seeking sort, his mind keen and curious like hers, observant and calculating like Silver's. She wondered what kinds of things Mr Grim had said to him.

She tipped her chin toward his coat. "So were you Navy, or did you nick that from somebody?"


	15. Navy (ravenousgrue)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.

"I was in the Navy with the Captain when we were both _much_ younger men," Barkly said, hauling barrels easily in spite of his grey muzzle, "He decided he didn't have much use for the _discipline_ after we were discharged. I did."

They argued as much as they got along, but Barkly knew that was why they worked so well together. There was a _compensation_ there. Silver was charismatic and bold but _intimidating_. It was easier for the crew to go to Barkly for things, Barkly who almost never raised his voice even when he was angry. Barkly, who didn't have cheap cyborg implants that made one of his eyes seem  _red_ when he was cross.

Knowing she'd probably want a little more from him than that tantalizing _tidbit_ , he kept talking, making sure to leave out anything he thought the Captain might want to tell _himself_. He was, Barkly would admit, the better. storyteller between the two of them.

"We were dishonorably discharged for destructive use of Naval property," he said, pausing a beat so he could haul another barrel, "We took a prototype scout ship to impress some young new female cadets -- you can guess whose idea that was -- and instead of impressing them we crashed the ship into the venue we were meant to meet them at. Of course the plan was to return it before anyone noticed it was gone, but neither of us really had any idea how to fly the prototype, since it was not, like the Captain had insisted, 'probably the same as any other ship'. The Captain tried to take all the blame but the whole thing was recorded so we were _both_ kicked out."

He laughed, although it was more of a subdued chuckle. His _version_ of a laugh. There was no residual malice in it even thought it was restrained. He'd been devastated at the time, but looking back on it, it'd been the best thing to happen to him. 

 "After a week-long self-pity bender we decided we'd become pirates instead," he said, "He's a _terrible_ influence, but a good man. I'd follow him into hell if he asked, and he'd have a fair chance of talking the Devil into letting us loose."


	16. Paragon (ahimsabitches)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.

The barrels were heavy, stretching the limits of her strength, but she kept her mouth shut. She'd need to get used to lugging, lifting, pulling and hauling again. She'd been almost a year off a ship, doing nothing but bussing tables and sitting on a cramped workbench trying desperately unsuccessfully to teach herself to weld. She was out of shape, plain and simple.

But she didn't think she'd stay that way for long. 

As Barkly told his story, she watched the warmth of nostalgia soften the pinch of his face and glow warmly in his eyes. It spread to her and she laughed at the image of him and Silver as young men, staring at each other with the all-too-familiar _oh shit_  expression, scraped and bloodied on the deck of the prototype ship.

What gave her pause, though, wasn't the words he'd said but the offhand, casual way he'd said them: "The Captain tried to take all the blame..."

That was a mighty grand gesture of altruism from the man who'd go on to become one of the most ruthless pirates to stride the galaxy.

Her eyebrows _rocketed_ up when Barkly baldly admitted he'd die for his Captain, called him a _good man_. She had heard, and knew cerebrally, that pirates cleaved to their own and brokered alliances and professed loyalty to their friends. But to hear this straight-laced Felid, a once-darling child of the Navy, unabashedly and frankly place his life in Silver's hands was a shock. Though, in way, that's what they all did when they stepped aboard the ship, but trusting a captain to weather them through storms and trusting a man to keep your life in his pocket were two completely different animals.

Because the various and sundry stories Bonnie had heard about him swung _hilariously_ wide of _any_ kind of consistency, she'd taken every single one with a grain of salt, especially the one about the cabinboy. There _were_ a precious few commonalities to all the stories told about Captain John Silver: he was an Ursid and a cyborg, two things fearsome on their own and terrifying when meshed into one body; he was the only pirate--man-- Captain Flint had ever feared; and he had sought Flint's Trove with a single-minded doggedness that left a trail of ruined ships and spacers in his wake. 

And suddenly he abandons his _lifelong obsession_  for a _neophyte whelp_? Something didn't add up.

Silver was charming, but she'd also taken that with a grain of salt.

Einon had been charming too. 

Charm and indulgence did not a good man make, and Bonnie would _never_ make that mistake _ever_ again.

Her brows drew down as she stowed the last barrel. "All due respect, Mister Barkly, but I have a hard time believing what you just said. Silver seems like a good captain and a fair leader, but...well, the stories going around don't paint him as a paragon of trustworthiness." She leaned on the counter, giving the whole kitchen one last once-over with her eyes. She nodded to herself. Shipshape.


	17. Ledger (ravenousgrue)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.

Barkly straightened his coat once they were done, and he would've taken his leave if she hadn't spoken again. He blinked at her, his expression neutral, and then he smiled, hard to spot since it was so _minute_.

"The Captain looks after his own," Barkley said, "Others, _well_. Others aren't always so lucky. Can he be ruthless? Dishonest? _Certainly_. He is the sum of his parts, Miss Bonnie, good _and_ bad." 

Barkly considered a moment. Only the most bloody tales were made into legends, after all, only the most dramatic, and John made a point not to steer them, not to confirm or deny. Those involved knew what happened, and that was enough for him. He'd been coasting off his own infamy for decades now, quite purposefully, too. Why bother threatening to kill someone when you could just say your name and make their blood run cold?

"Some years back, maybe ten," Barkley said, fixing a button on his cuff, "I got nicked for forgetting to renew my pilot's license. They had a _very_ long list of other charges, but that one was the only one they could prove, and so they locked me up for the maximum sentence. Three years, if you were wondering."

His smile widened enough to be perceptible to the eye.

"He looked after my family while I was put away," he said, "I didn't ask him and he didn't even tell me he was doing it. I didn't find out until I got out and my wife told me. He's done some terrible things, but so have I, and so has most of this crew, but the difference is how you _balance_ that ledger. The Captain keeps his _very_ well-balanced."

Better than Barkly ever had, but he played things a bit closer to the vest when it came to his own sketchy past. His wife knew some of it, but not even the Captain knew _all_ of it.

"He's honest when it _counts_ ," he said, winking at her and leaning on the archway that separated the galley from the small mess hall. They had a little more time before John started hollering at them, "But honesty isn't always the best policy in this line of work. The Captain mentioned something about you doing _Division_ work? Or that he thought maybe you'd done some, he wasn't terribly clear when he _mumbled_ your credentials at me over breakfast."

He'd had enough self-awareness to be vaguely embarrassed of himself for the hire, even if she seemed very much to Barkly like a fine addition to the crew. He knew first hand how grand an Ursid cook could be, and John had practically _swooned_ describing the meal she'd made for him last night.


	18. Past (ahimsabitches)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.

She very much liked it when Barkly smiled. It reminded her a little of Miarissy's milky-fanged grin, but unlike her and Silver, Barkly didn't hand his smiles out often. When he did, he didn't turn them loose. Kept them leashed and obedient. 

Barkly's words settled on the scarecrow shape of Silver in her mind like birds, out-of-place and jumpy. He could have been lying to her, but she didn't think so. There wasn't much reason to. She'd already voluntarily signed on to the voyage, and if Silver had told Barkly about her already, he'd have made mention of how she'd handled meeting Mr Grim. The depthlessly _odd_ telepathic spoon had not frightened her away from the voyage, and neither had mention of the Expanse. So she decided he was telling the truth, and smiled a little as these new pieces fell into place. She still did not trust him, would not. Not as profoundly as Barkly did. He _was_  a man, after all, and a pirate to boot. She would crew his ship, cook his food, but she would not shake his hand as friend.  

The smile slipped from her when Barkly mentioned the Division. No use lying to him either. "My parents were contractors with the Interplanetary Surveying and Terraforming Divison of the Federation. I spent most of my life planet-hopping with them. Mum is a cartographer and Dad is a botanist. We had a rotating team of zoologists, geologists, trackers, linguists, culturalists, hunters, anybody my parents thought would be useful for the mission we were given. They'd usually just hand us a briefcase full of communicators, log books, sample pods, stuff like that, and the frequency to call them on. They'd just sort of...point us to an under-mapped area of the galaxy and say, 'You have two years. Go forth and see what you see.'" She flapped her hands in a shooing motion. "It was our--my parents'-- job to collect as much data on as many habitable and semi-habitable planets they could and log the uninhabitable ones for someone else to check out later. Oh, and draw the map of that region." She chuckled. "Cap'n Silver didn't tell you much because I didn't tell _him_ much. I sort of let the food do the talking. See, while my parents and the rest of the team were off exploring, there needed to be someone there to make camp, cook all the food, clean up, strike camp, stuff like that. That was my job."

She ran a hand through her hair, regretting not getting it shorn again. It would grow in fast and curly and thick and get in her eyes and annoy the _shit_ out of her. Oh well, too late now. 

"The team would bring back all these different things: plants, animals... and I'd test them to see how they tasted. Dad taught me how to cook." That wasn't entirely true, but a half-lie took fewer words to explain than did the entire truth. "When I left the team, I... wandered. Took work where I could get it, which was mostly this." She opened her arms in an all-encompassing gesture and lifted her head to the ceiling. "And a few taverns and pubs at ports and docks." She straightened her shirt, very much aware the story she'd told was holey as swiss cheese and even _more_  aware of how _unwilling_ she was to answer any more questions. "Feel free to take that back to Cap'n Silver if you think it'd help him to know," she said.


	19. Rousing (ravenousgrue)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings. 
> 
> This is one of my favorite chapters.

Barkly was a good listener, his eyes always in focus, nodding in the right spots, taking it all in with an expression of sincere interest. A little sketchy around the edges, this one, but that wasn't exactly unusual in a crew like this. She'd impressed Silver enough to get a spot, and if he hadn't questioned her about this, it must've been because he hadn't felt like it was important.

He had an uncanny ability to build up the character of others that only deepened with age. More than one crewman, he was sure, would be a better man after the voyage.

Assuming they lived. Between Mr. Grim and the Expanse, it was hard to look further ahead, to what the worlds _beyond_ the Expanse would be like, a trailing arm of a galaxy that bled off into _nothing_.

"If he'd wanted to know he would've asked," Barkly assured her, "He saw something in you and now you're here, and for now that's endorsement enough for me."

He kept it in his pocket, the stern talking-to they'd all had over breakfast, about how to comport themselves around a _lady_ , about how if he got even a _whiff_ of trouble he'd _personally_ throw the perpetrator overboard without so much as a _how-do-you-do_. She would learn for herself the sort of man he was, and she might take offense to the gesture besides. At least this early on. She would appreciate it more later, when she saw how he measured up to his reputation. And how he didn't.

"Come along, Miss Bonnie," he said, "We've got a _rousing speech_ to listen to."

He gestured her ahead of him, a gentleman through and through, but he didn't linger on the main deck with the rest of the milling crew, moving up to the quarter deck, near the door to the Captain's cabin. There was no sign of Mr. Grim, and Barkly was glad for it. His presence would distract from whatever it was the Captain had to stay, and unsettling as he was, he had the good sense not to spend a lot of time among them.

For now, anyways. Barkly suspected they'd get a better read on Mr. Grim once they hit the Expanse.

The door opened and the Captain strode out, ducking his head to get through it and then straightening to his full height. John looked (and _felt_ ) right at home looming above the crew on the quarter deck, Barkly to his right, and once he was sure everyone was on deck to listen (sparing Mr. Grim), he got right down to it.

"You lot are the best crew money can buy," he said, "Or at least that's what I've told Mr. Grim, who's a feller you shouldn't be naggin' with questions and needless prattle. He'll speak t'ya if he has somethin' t'say t'yah and you'd best leave it at that. We've three weeks voyage through charted space ahead of us, and then it's straight into the Expanse. Don't go makin' a liar outta me, you lot, or I'll be makin' a coat outta yer sorry hides. At the very least a _hat_."

It wasn't a secret they were going throught the Expanse, best to be up front about something not even _pirates_ were always willing to do, but it was still a chilling word to hear, especially after being warned off pestering their financier. It would sink in more, he knew, when they were closer to it. For now it was far away and the illusion of safety was warm and comforting.

"Mr. Grim assures me his charts are right and I'm inclined to believe a feller with so much bloody money to spend," he paused for the mild chuckle that got him. Nervous laughter, but laughter all the same, "It'll be hard business out there and this is yer last chance t'bugger off. No hard feelin's if so. If yah have any doubts, it's best y'keep yer boots on solid ground."

He paused again, but no one left, and he hadn't expected anyone to.

"I swear t'yah on me mother's cookin' I'll do everythin' in my power t'get each n'every one a'yah home safe'n sound," John said, "This is yer home for the next little while, an' I expect yeh t _'behave_ like it. Keep the scrappin' to a minimum, don't go damagin' _my_ ship, and no terrorizin' the cabin boy until he goes through puberty."

He grinned and winked at the young man, who looked appropriately embarrassed to have attention called to him.

"We do this, lads, an' it'll be the first time it's ever _been_ done," John said, moving forward a pace, his enthusiasm practically glowing through his skin, "Traverse the Expanse, see what's beyond, stake our share of the claims. And we'll be doin' it _together_. Not because you've heard stories about me since y'were knee-high and not because we've got the best cook in charted space in the galley," a wink for Bonnie, whom he'd already discussed with the crew, "We'll get through it because we'll work _together_ , work as a _crew_. Y'never set out t'make legends, lads. They _happen_ t'yah, and the legend is always sweetest when yer alive t'hear it told after the fact. _Now!_ "

He straightened, his expression _very_ stern.

"Get yer sorry arses in motion and get us out of this bloody port!" he pointed upwards, "Hop to it, now! And _boy!_ "

Grey was stock still, his eyes wide as he waited for his first order.

"You go on an' help Miss Bonnie with whatever she needs," he said, "If'n y'ain't got orders from me, yeh get 'em from her."

Grey nodded stupidly.

"What was that lad?" John cupped a big hand behind his good ear. Grey didn't get it at first, but he figured it out in a rush, his expression mortified. 

" _AYEAYESIR!!_ " he exclaimed, practically knocking himself out with the force of his salute. John laughed and made a shooing motion, and then turned to Mr. Barkly, giving him the particulars of their course. Grey scurried to Bonnie's side, and after a nervous glance up at the quarter deck and Captain Silver's broad back, he very nervously saluted Bonnie.

"Ma'am?" he asked. He looked like he was about to explode from a combination of excitement, nerves, and overwhelming curiosity, but he knew he wasn't supposed to be bothering the more seasoned crewman with his 'yammerin' as the Captain had put it. Cabin boys should be seen working and not heard, but he was desperate to hear every single story everyone on board had to tell. Even Miss Bonnie, who he'd thought was maybe the Captain's daughter at first, except he hadn't said so over breakfast even if he'd been _acting_ like a bit like she was.


	20. Underway (ahimsabitches)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Threat of minor violence. Mention of poison.

Bonnie followed the amusingly polite first mate up the stairs to the deck and took her place among the crew, who mostly offered her curt, businesslike nods and a few smiles. A human, shaggy of hair and strong of arm, no grey yet in his beard, grinned ebulliently at her, eyes and teeth flashing, and pantomimed a flourishing bow. She hiked an eyebrow, offering him but the thinnest of Barkly smiles.

She counted the crew. About 15, and a ragtag bunch. A couple humans; a couple Sileni, goat-footed and human-faced save for the eyes; the Symphalian; a Krailoni, little but a head and legs; a hulking brown-furred bugbear; a Crex; a lizardlike Zithraysian; another Felid; and a few others. Until she knew how they ate, she'd make double. If they ate like the men they looked to be, it would be enough. If not, she didn't think they'd complain about leftovers.

The door on the quarterdeck opened and jabber immediately ceased. The crew gazed up as one at their captain.

The man towering over them was the man, grown into a legend himself, she'd heard about in the stories: a captain, a sky-king with a booming voice, flinty eyes, iron fist. She smiled when he smiled at the cabinboy, a young and very nervous Sileni, without malice. She saw the light in both his eyes as he talked about making legends. It was proud and joyous, but the cold, unyielding edge of avarice also glittered there. She smiled again when he winked at her, blushing a little at the praise, taken up by Silver's impassioned words despite the little warnings pinging off the bottom of her brain: Silver's greed, the grim fisheye, the Expanse. 

Outside of the warm yellow safety of the galley, the full import of where they were going hit her on the booming tide of Silver's voice and she felt her blood chill a little. The Expanse. 

The anatomist's face, glistening crimson, flashed up from memory: mismatched eyes bulging from a red-wet face, one sea-colored and staring at a point beyond the room, one white and veined. The mouth below them slack in a horrorstruck O, jaw working spasmodically as if to speak, but the only sound was the blood flowing from his head down to gurgle and bubble at the back of his throat. She screwed her eyes shut. Pulled a breath in. Let it out.

Silver's speechifying was done and the crew leapt about their tasks as if they'd been tased.

She turned to the young Sileni called Grey, who shook like a leaf and blushed so deeply Bonnie could see it through the coarse carpet of hair that covered his neck and was slowly working its way up his cheeks. Once he was a man grown, he would sport a full, thick billygoat beard and horns that either curled around his long ears or stuck straight out behind him, depending on which continent of his planet his family was from. For now, though, they were little more than nubs poking out of the brambly black nest of his hair.

_You look how I feel,_ she thought, and laughed when he saluted her. She gently pulled his hand from his forehead. "This isn't a Navy ship, kiddo. No saluting, and for godssakes, lay off the ma'aming. My name is Bonnie and that's what you'll call me. Clear?"

"Yes ma'am! I mean Bonnie! Yes, Bonnie!"

She'd never had a charge before. She'd gotten used to being the neophyte on every voyage, and to have someone younger and greener than her on board, under her care no less, was somewhat of a surprise. An uncertainly welcome one; it would have been a hard day keeping up with a kitchen demolished daily by the crew. But she'd have to train Grey up first. Her shoulders sagged a little with the knowledge that until Grey got used to the kitchen, he'd be more trouble than help.

She threw a companionable arm around the young man's shoulders, as much for her own comfort as his, and flashed him a grin. "Come on. Let's help the crew out. The kitchen will keep until we get underway. Is this your first voyage?"

Grey nodded, his head bobbing comically. She blinked.

"Quite a way to start your career as a pirate, hurling yourself straight into the Expanse."

Grey shrugged helplessly. Bonnie burst out laughing, a crystalline, musical sound, as they fell in beside the Symphalian at the rigging.

She took Grey's hand and placed it on the rigging as Silver bellowed "Take her away!" to the engineer belowdecks. Seconds later, the ship _surged_ violently forward and they were pressed back by giant invisible hands.

"Whoa," Grey said when the forces equalized and they were safely under the dome of artificial gravity and atmo.

The crew bustled about, and Bonnie kept an eye on the galactic clock hanging above the tiller. She had time.

Leaving Grey on deck, she scampered up the rigging of the foremast as high as it took her and crouched on the high crossbeam from which hung the billowing solar sail. She gazed into the black, dusted here and there with color and alive with a riot of stars, and let her eyes slip closed.

It was good, so phenomenally good, to be moving again. She remembered the simple and soul-nourishing feeling of sailing. She’d never thought herself a spiritual person, having been very rooted in the joys and agonies of physical existence. But some undercurrent of power, not quite physical, seemed to flow into her from the groaning ship, from the whipping wind, from the smell of the air. So many sensations combined produced in Bonnie something far more than the sum of their parts, some joy too big and tectonic for naming, that felt like being rocked to sleep by a loving hand and being thrown by a violent storm at the same time.

She had no idea what would happen in the Expanse, no idea how things would go with Mr Grim, and no idea how the end of the voyage would find her. But, in a way, none of that mattered. She had been adrift, body and mind, for many years. It had torn at her at first, the disconnect from family and the paltry, rambling "home" she'd had, but when it was clear that her parents were not coming for her, she'd understood that she would continue to drift as long as she lived. She was part-Ursid, born of two career drifters. Now, it was a part of her, and she valued it.

She swung down from the rigging a few minutes later and pulled Grey, face squinched as he tried a bowline knot, into the galley. In the time it took her to don her apron, roll up her sleeves and pull out the stockpot, he managed to get his apron on and tied. She watched him with resigned amusement. "How much do you know about cooking, Grey?"

The boy blinked, mouth open, and shrugged. "A little, I guess," he said after a bit. "I know how to make spaghetti."

She chuckled dryly. "And to think, the Cap'n put you as cook before I got here. Come on, I gave us plenty of extra time to get cooking. Dinner bell's at eighteen-hundred. That's four hours. I'll make a decent cook out of you yet."

Grey gulped. "Please don't tell your father if I break something. Please."

"My father?" Bonnie arched an eyebrow.

"Uh, isn't... Cap'n Silver... your father?"

Bonnie laughed. "No, _definitely_ not. Easy mistake to make, though. You don't see a ton of Ursids wandering about. C'mon, I'll show you where everything is."

The dinner bell rang, and the crew wandered in piecemeal, picking up their plates from a line of them Grey had placed on the bench closest to the stove. Bonnie watched their faces and grinned as eyes flew wide and forks became shovels. The meal was a toned-down version of the bison she'd fed Silver, with less fire and fanfare. She stepped out of the kitchen and wended her way through the benches, taking compliments and asking questions. Was the meat too dry? Cooked thoroughly enough? Were the yams too firm? Was the marinade overpowering?

She had not expected pirates to have well-developed palettes, but her tour of the benches wasn't about that. She soaked in the free-flowing praise like a sponge, making no effort to hide how pleased it made her. But this was her first, and finest, opportunity to connect with the men, for them to get to know her as fellow crew. For them to know her for her skill, not for her tits and hips. She'd marked her presence as the only female one aboard; that was not a startlement. But every time she found herself awash in maleness, the first order of business was to nip any hint of _predation_  in the bud.

Suddenly her hand was gripped and the human, called Yossarian, who'd bowed at her on deck was on one knee in front of her, his face in a comic parody of desperate beseeching. She blinked. 

"Miss Bonnie, I fear me heart's in danger, for you've already won me stomach over. Marry me, or every meal hence that's not from your divine hand will turn to ash in me mouth!" He clapped a dramatic hand over his heart.

She did nothing to suppress a sardonic smile. "I'm flattered, I surely am, but I don't think your _wife_  would take too kindly to hearing that her _meals_ have lost their savor." She flicked her eyes down to the gold wedding band on the hand that was splayed over his chest. The mock-pained expression dropped off his face, and she heard ribald chuckles from the crew around her. " _Busted_ ," one of them whispered. She pulled him upright, clapped a chummy hand on his shoulder. They were of a height, though he was not small for a human. "But while I've got your stomach, I'll treat it well. There are leftovers, if you want seconds. Just let Grey kn-- _OI_!"

The Zithraysian stood over the pot that held the bison, reaching his clawed, curiously padded hand into it. Bonnie flung the wooden spoon in her hand at his head with brutal snapping force, and it hit his temple with a sharp _thock!_  " _Git yer grubby little paws OUT of that pot and sit the FUCK down!_  If you want seconds, you  _ask!_ Don't go bargin' into _my_ kitchen an' stick yer filthy face where it's not _welcome_!" She shrilled, bulling towards him.

He narrowed his lizard-green eyes and hissed meanly, their faces inches from each other. "You en't me mither, young whelp. I do as I please." The words shirred out of his scaled, toothless mouth on a tide of foul breath, reeking of old ale and old meat. 

Without breaking eye contact, Bonnie reached into her shirt, between her left arm and breast to one of the many pockets she'd sewn, and pulled out a small glass vial, stoppered with a cork. She spoke to him, but she spoke loud enough so the whole crew could hear. "Do you know what this is?" After a pause, she continued. "It's called iocane powder. It's from the ioca plant on Aldebaran II. It's colorless, odorless, tasteless. It's a _potent_  neurotoxin that only targets the nerves of the digestive tract. There's enough here to _boil_  twenty of you from the _inside out._  A little dab of this on your food next time, and what time over the next twenty-four hours you don't spend puking you'll spend feeling like your guts are eating themselves alive." She replaced the vial, aware of the silence in the galley, aware of the eyes on her. Aware of the very real possibility that Silver would be _cross_  with her, but needing to _put her foot down._  "Let me give you a bit of advice," she said to him and to the entire crew. "Don't fuck with the person who makes your food."

She leaned past him, picked up a plate, scooped a hearty portion of bison out of the pot, offered it to him. He glared down at her, hissed again, and walked out of the galley.


	21. Pecking Order (ravenousgrue)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.

He'd seen her up in the rigging before she'd ducked below and felt vindicated in letting her aboard: she needed this trip as much as any of them did, needed to find something she didn't have a name for, needed to feel her significance in a cold, unfeeling universe. She'd do all right.

John chuckled at the proposal. He'd had a similar thought, though he had the good sense to keep such silliness to himself. There was more to her than cooking, and that was why she was aboard in the first place. When things started to go sour with the Zithraysian he put a subtle hand on Barkly's shoulder when he moved to get up, to intervene. This first meal was an important one -- if they didn't get their pecking order sorted out _now_ , it might be later, when it was less convenient.

He didn't much care for the lizard-bastard's attitude but he was tough and aggressive, and John had no doubt he could control him if it came to that. He stayed silent even as Bonnie threatened to poison the lot of them, doing his best to hide a smile. Had she had a secret tenure on a pirate crew before? Again, Barkly looked like he wanted to say something, and Silver released him this time, gesturing him out. If he wanted to give the man a talking to he was welcome, but they were both justified in their scrap in Silver's mind.

And at least one of them had learned a valuable lesson. She didn't need her battles fought for her, in any case, and Silver gestured to her with a grin, pushing his already cleared plate away.

"No sense lettin' that go t'waste," he said, pointing at the heaping plate she'd just dished up, "Grab a portion fer yerself and sit down, lass. An' you can give _that_ t'me," he patted his belly and grinned, "Got t'keep me girlish figure."

He was sending a clear message to the crew that remained in the mess hall: this was Bonnie's domain, and they'd best respect it. If not for him, then for their _own_ well being, since she'd come armed with ruddy _poison_.

"Pay him no mind," Silver added, waving a hand dismissively, waiting for her to join him and the crew with her own plate, "Prob'ly needin' t'shed. Skin's on too tight or summat. Y'won't find a feller with better aim."

Or better at infiltrating enemy ships undetected and sabotaging their tech, but that wasn't entirely relevant to the conversation. Difficult jobs often meant fellers with difficult personalities. He'd settle in or he'd get sorted out. Either way, Silver wasn't worried.


	22. Tranquil (ahimsabitches)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.
> 
> Forgot to mention in the previous installment: I did not invent the name "iocane". Tip of the hat to Princess Bride for that one.

The crew watched the Zithraysian tromp out. The low ceiling of the galley eclipsed him from view. Fifteen or so pairs of eyes swiveled and locked on her. She ignored them and eyed Grey sternly, who had pressed himself into the corner during her  _discussion_  with the Zithraysian. Slowly, the silence in the galley filled with the clatter of plates, clunk of tankards on wood, and voices in myriad tongues.

"You were supposed to be watching things." She put her hands on her hips.

Looking for all the world like a kicked puppy, Grey twisted his hands in his apron. "Sorry, ma'am. Er, Bonnie."

Silver beckoned her over, and Bonnie gritted her teeth, but he was smiling. So he wasn't angry. That, or he _was,_ and was saving the tongue-lashing for a time and place out of the crew's hearing. Either way, she felt some of the tension slip out of her shoulders. She took the plate Grey handed her and filled it to heaping. Her stomach had been fussing insistently since the bison had hit the skillet; the bits and tastes she'd taken had done little to appease it. Carrying both plates to where Silver sat, fork gripped between her teeth, she glared back at Grey again. _Watch the goddamn kitchen._  

Silver waved the Zithraysian away as she sat. They both tucked into their food, Bonnie with a half-grin for Silver's comment about his _girlish figure._  Cute, like the proposal. But was it hiding anything? 

"I won't really poison the crew," she said around a mouthful of yam, watching his face-- and the yellow star of his eye--carefully. "Iocane is the only thing like that I brought with me. Most of the other stuff is...helpful. Healing. Good stuff."

She'd tell him about it if he asked, but didn't want to overplay her hand in case he denied her. The powders, herbs, and mixtures she'd bought and brought were, largely, designed to settle and becalm and, for lack of a better word, _tranquilize._  If their journey through charted space was only three weeks, that meant the better part of a _year_  they'd be spending in the howling black of the Expanse. If she could help it, there would not be any more self-lobotomies. Or worse.


	23. Blasphemy (ravenousgrue)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.

"I didn't ask ya t'explain," was all John said, his tone pleasant and dismissive, "This ain't a Naval cruiser, lass, much as Mister Barkly might want yah t'think otherwise."

He gave her a very, _very_ gentle nudge, more focused on his second helping than her for the moment, "Some of 'em might deserve it later on, anyhow, _eh_?"

He laughed, aware enough of the vaguely terrifying notion of Long John Silver deciding they deserved to die. He'd _never_ act so rashly, not without provocation, but _subtle_ was all he needed. The wild rumors about him were menacing enough, so a little peek of a threat said with a smile went _much_ further than it might otherwise.

"Settlin' in all right? Young Mr. Grey not too much hassle?" he asked her. He liked to talk and he liked to talk with his crew, so he wasn't paying her any special attention. John knew he'd have to make a point of it at least at first, but what had seemed like a grand idea drunk was a bit of a hassle sober. He could stay professional, but it went against his every instinct, "Have everythin' yeh need?"

John liked how she looked when she beamed with pride and he hoped she'd have more than on chance to feel that way before they were home again. Whatever _home_ was. He wanted to dig a lot deeper, but with her he figured he'd let her come to him. She had a look behind her eyes like maybe she spooked easy, at least when it came to that sort of thing.

"By the way," he added after a beat, remembering something and leaning in just a bit, like he was sharing a conspiritous secret with her, "Don't tell me mum what I said 'bout yer cookin'. She'd have me other ear fer that."

He grinned at her and gave her another nudge, taking a _very_ large bite of his meal as though his mother would somehow be aware of his blasphemy.


	24. Weird (ahimsabitches)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.

Hair on the back of her neck prickling, she remained diplomatically silent at his offhanded suggestion that she may need to murder the crew.

_So some of the stories_ are _true._

She swallowed the bite of bok choy that had kept her, thankfully, from responding to his threat, and smiled. "Grey's...well. He'll learn. I'm glad I came along when I did. Begging your pardon, Cap'n, but I'm surprised you stuck him with this job in the first place. Such a beautifully well-stocked kitchen would have been lost on him." she glanced back at Grey, who stood by the stove glancing at the crew nervously.

Leonard the bo'sun, a shaggy bat-eared gorilla-nosed bugbear, rose from the bench, his head almost brushing the ceiling of the galley. Held up his plate and glanced toward the stove. Bonnie nodded. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Grey scoop another double portion of everything onto Leonard's plate. Leonard dipped his head in respectful thanks and returned to his bench. Bonnie smiled. That'd do. She returned her attention to Silver. 

"Whoever stocked that kitchen knew what he was doing," she said knowingly.

And suddenly, the slip of a silverfish shivered through her. **_Good evening, Bonnie. I hope you are well._**

_Mister Grim,_ she thought. 

**_Forgive my intrusion. I'm curious about these tranquilizing herbs you've brought. What effects do they have? How exactly do they work?_ **

_I can't really carry on two conversations at once, sir,_  she thought, blindly throwing the thought out and hoping that Mr Grim would catch it.

**_Quite right. We shall talk another time._ **

_Do you want me to save you a plate of dinner?_

_**Very kind of you, but no, thank you.** _

And the presence was gone.

  _T_ _hat was weird,_  Bonnie thought, not caring if he heard her. Silver nudged her, grinning, and she heard the tail end of his words: "...have me other ear fer that."

She cleared her throat, took a bite to give herself time to think. Ah, he'd said something about his mother. Her eyes lit up and her mind eagerly seized on the positive distraction from the fisheyed presence that had just oiled through her mind. "She taught you to cook, did she?"

Ursids were few and far between, but the legends of their cooking were common as wharf rats. The only other Ursid she'd known-- her father-- had been much more interested in finding, cataloging, writing about and reading about plants than cooking them. Perhaps Silver, a full Ursid, still had some recipes and techniques passed down from his mother. _Nothing_  compared to real Ursid cooking.

Or so she'd been told.


	25. Good work (ravenousgrue)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings. Thanks for your patience while I took a week off, everybody! Updates will resume as normal.

Her eyes went out of focus like she wasn't really listening, and he flicked a look at Leonard, a big lad who'd never had trouble finding a girl to keep him company on shore leave as long as Silver had known him. He felt a prickle of _annoyance_ but let it pass, glad to find she'd refocused on him once she'd gotten a good _eyeful_ of the bo'sun.

"That she did, that she did," John said, "Pap too, but he and I were _usually_ tasked wit' huntin' game. Mum was the one who had a real _passion_ fer it. _Nothin_ ' flies under the radar better than an Ursid cook."

He was speaking from experience.

"If yer _lucky_ ," he said, "I might make me _famous_ Bonza Beast stew. Recipe's been in me family probably since we had a homeworld."

John was scraping the remnants of his meal off his plate, determined not to let any go to waste.

"Glad yeh approve of yer kitchen," he said. He was tempted to go for thirds but he'd just be eating it to taste it now. Which was _partly_ what the seconds was, but only near the end, "An' you'd be surprised how quickly a fellah can learn somethin' when he's got a _whole crew_ breathin' down his neck."

He wouldn't be a cabin boy if he wasn't at least a _little_ stressed out and fearful for his life.

"I'd best get on with it," he pushed up from the table with a grunt and gave Bonnie's shaggy hair a ruffle, "Good work, lass. Glad t'have yeh aboard."


	26. Fly (ahimsabitches)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.

Bonnie stepped on deck, stretching luxuriously and filling her lungs to capacity. She loved the galley, loved cooking, but being belowdecks for most of the turn of the clock grew wearying. She needed to breathe the free--albeit fake-- air.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a pouch of her favorite herb, Northern Lights, a strain of indica that hit hard but went down smooth, along with a small sheaf of rolling paper, from which she took one onionskin-thin piece. As she rolled, she thought. 

Grey had, over the past twelve days, grown from a nervous, clumsy boy with two left hooves into a not-quite-confident-but-less-nervous young man that moved through the kitchen with the lanky, lucky grace all teenage boys seemed to possess. He still fucked up, Bonnie thought with a rueful grin and a hand to the side of her head, where still swelled the goose egg he'd given her when he'd accidentally knocked a cast iron skillet from the huge steel rack above the stove. But he was eager to please and well on his way to becoming a good cook. And he already was a good boy. The tentative, aloof, almost motherly affection she'd had for the boy had bloomed into a real bond. The speed at which it had happened surprised her, and the depth of trust he'd earned from her make her shake her head helplessly. She trusted him enough to handle dinner prep while she took a turn on deck. After less than a month. 

He was still twitchy around the male crew, especially the _grumpier_  ones. But after the spat with the Zithraysian, whose name she learned later was Socrates, the crew had fallen nicely in line. There were, as there always had been, men who toed her lines every now and then, and as long as they were in her galley, they were put back in their places. With the Cap'n's blessing. For which she was grateful. She glanced toward the tiller. He and Mr Barkly were conversing with the helmsman. Bonnie struck a match on the sole of her boot and the first hit, held as long as she could, swirled out of her mouth in a thick, silvery cloud and coated the inside of her skull with a warm multihued fuzz. She let herself sag against the railing.

"Did you bring enough for everyone?"

She knew the voice before she opened her eyes. It rumbled down from far above her and if she'd had bare feet, she'd have felt it vibrate up from the deck. It was halfway between a dog bark and a drumbeat rendered verbal. She smiled up at Leonard, the bo'sun, whom she'd come to like as well over the days. Taciturn and standoffish, edging toward surly, he was a piercingly intelligent man, and a gentle one once his grump, crusted on him like salt from the sea, was cracked. Bonnie liked him very much, and called him her first friend on the ship.

"Technically I did, but we'd only get one hit and one hit'd do someone like you shitall."

Leonard leaned on the railing and chuckled, and Bonnie felt it in her arms resting on the wood. "Even if you gave me all of it, I wouldn't feel anything."

"No?" Bonnie took another hit, the end of the joint glowing.

"No. Things like that don't affect bugbears."

"Not even alcohol?"

Leonard chuckled again, eyeing Bonnie knowingly. "There isn't a soul on board this ship, or many for that matter, that could outdrink me."

"So what does affect you, Leonard?" Bonnie dragged on the joint, letting the smoke ease out her nostrils.

He tipped her a wink. "A pretty face. Most specifically, this one." Leonard dug in the pocket of his red-and-gold striped vest and pulled out a folded piece of paper, worn and yellow. Bonnie unfolded it and looked into the faded face of another bugbear, her grinning face crisscrossed by the lines of the fold. She smiled. "Your wife?"

He took the picture back, stowed it, gazed at a passing star formation, softly glowing pink, yellow, orange, red. It reflected in his oildrop eyes. "My daughter."

Bonnie grinned. "What's her name? How old is she?"

"Evangeline. To you she'd be about eight. But in calendar years she's twenty-four. Her favorite thing is to fly."

"Fly?" Bonnie cocked an eyebrow.

Leonard's fanged grin, splitting his furred, wedge-shaped face, was terrifying and brilliant. "I'll show you. You're about her size." He bent down, interlaced his fingers in a cup, and held them out to her. "Step in. Hold onto my shoulders."

Bonnie hiked an eyebrow, blinked at him. "Er." 

This wasn't like the grumpy, aloof Leonard she knew.

"I promise."

"You promise what?" she asked even as she found herself placing the joint gently on the railing and settling one foot into the basket of his massive, gorilla-like hands.

Then she was _rocketed_ upward, squealing, and there was the crow's nest, and she clung to it for dear life. The lookout, the other Sileni, gaped at her, matching her expression. He hauled her into the small circular cup of the crow's nest. She blinked a few times, trying to figure out if what had just happened _had actually happened._  She looked around her, found herself a good sixty feet above everything else, saw the lookout's _flabbergasted_  expression, decided it _had_ happened, and leaned over the railing. "I _flew!_ " she yelled down to Leonard.

"Now jump down!" He held out his massive, brown-furred arms. 

Bonnie recoiled. "No thanks! I'll climb down!" She crawled over the lip of the railing to the rope that led down to the rigging. As she leaned out, she glanced at the gape-mouthed Sileni. "Hey, thanks for pulling me up." 

He said nothing.

She dropped the last few feet to the ground, laughing breathlessly. "That was so fun I never want to do it again." She picked up the joint again and took a deep, shaky hit.


	27. Hurrybonnie (ravenousgrue)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.

It had all been smooth sailing so far, and John hadn't expected any different. Charted space was safe, even close to the edge. _Especially_ close, since so many folks wanted to be the first ones through. No on had yet, of course, and he expected there'd be _quite_ a stir at their last port of call. He was looking forward to a very big evening (and _late_ morning) the night before they took to the Expanse.

He'd been a bit more discerning with this crew to avoid any situations like the one with Mr. Scroop. He'd been a fine pirate, Mr. Scroop, but the mongrel didn't have a soft edge on him and it'd been too _close_ with him. No incidents had kicked up that hadn't settled themselves, Bonnie getting her licks in with the rest of them.

_Bonnie_ was a subject he tried not to dwell on, but it was difficult. A pretty girl, an _Ursid_ girl, who could cook like a dream? Who could scrap with the lads? He'd fancied her the moment he'd seen her but he was able to keep his hat on such things in his old age, not wanting to press in with unwanted advances.

And he'd figured himself more interested in her for _carnal_ reasons, which always passed with time. That's how he'd _figured_ it, anyhow, but he made excuses to talk to her sometimes, and kept an eye on her while she was on deck.

That's how he spotted her and Leonard, and he'd let it be at first, figuring them both for having a smoke and nothing more. The squeal snared his attention right quick and he watched the two of them with a frown, which he didn't notice until Barkly ticked a claw on his metal shoulder.

"Eh?"

"You've always been a sore loser," Barkly said, looking _very much_ like the cat that got the cream.

"Oh, come off it," Silver said gruffly, giving him an irate shove for his trouble, "I haven't  _lost_ nothin _'_. I wasn't _tryin_ ' fer anythin'!"

"He's younger, _fitter_..."

"Who's side're yeh on?"

" _Bonnie's_."

Silver huffed and adjusted his coat.

"'Twas only a passin' fancy, anyhow," he said, not even sure why he was trying to save face when Barkly had sniffed him out in a second, "Not a word more, Barkly. On yer life, yeh smug _bastard_."

"Not a word," Barkly agreed.

The night watch was a skeleton crew and they didn't even get a chance to raise the alarm. One moment there was nothing, and the next there was _something_ , but it was already too late. It was slow at first, _tentative_. They were well-practiced and knew not to raise the alarm, knew they'd be driven off, and so softly, softly they drizzled themselves onto the ship, slithering into bunks and oozing under doors, gently waking their prey with coos and kisses from their long lost loves. It took _time_ to meld, took _time_ to coax their mind to open fully, ripe fruit ready to nourish them and to nourish their soon to be freshly planted young.

**_B_** ** _onnie_** , Mr. Grim's voice had a flanged quality, distorted and strange, like a poorly coded radio transmission, **_Bonnie there's some trouble. H u r r ybonnie._**

His voice usually faded gently but there was an unpleasant _popping_ feeling in her ears instead, like someone had yanked the plug unexpectedly.


	28. Siren (ahimsabitches)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for violence, blood, and gore.

She was hurled from sleep, hurled upright by Mr Grim's strained alarm ringing red in her head. Blinking owlishly, she cast about in the dark, blood roaring past her ears. Her heart hammered in her chest, spurred by a shot of adrenaline from some nameless fear. 

_Mister Grim?_

Nothing.

She called him again, casting the mental net.

A high, sweet, wordless song flowed into her mind. It was light as a laughing stream and the glints off its surface were not reflections of the water; they were broken, jagged glass.

She uncurled herself from her hammock and lit the lamp hung by the door. Greasy yellow light poured through the cabin.

"...that's not right," she murmured.

Most of the men were still in their beds, but there were _women_  with them, _naked_ women humming and singing and cooing and writhing on top of them. Grey lay in his hammock, eyes raptorous and mouth slack under a voluptuous Sileni woman. Socrates was drawn out of his hammock by a Zithraysian female, pressing her hips against his. He gripped them and bent to her lips, growling and hissing. Yossarian had a woman pinned against the wall, kissing her passionately. They broke, and Bonnie saw _herself._

 _"That's definitely not right,"_  she said, wide-eyed and awake, and spun for the door. 

A pair of thin and impossibly _strong_ arms, like cabled steel, clamped down on her from behind. 

_EINON_

Her blood froze and her mind screeched to a stop. A series of images flashed up behind her eyes like automatic rifle fire and she tried to scream but could not because a hand-- smelling of swamp and ozone and death and steel slammed down over her mouth. 

Einon's ravenous pink eyes in the dark, firelight irising blades in them. Her parents, filthy and gaunt-faced, gazing blankly out between the bars of a cage. The glistening pale grey landscape of the medic's brain, every hill and valley illuminated by the lamplight. The crew of the ship lined up like soldiers, dangling from the yardarm, faces puffed and purpleblack and bellies slashed, piles of guts at their feet. She screwed her eyes shut, tears spilling down her cheeks, and thrashed in the thing's grip. It clamped down tighter on her body and mind. Her heart beat a terrified tattoo against her ribs and her mind fuzzed out into the high white whine of panic.

 _GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT GETOUT_ **GETOUT** She screamed, bulling the voracious presence in her mind aside, and flicked a knife out of the sheath at her belt. In a vicious backward snap, she stabbed at the thing but it dodged, drilling a buzzing shriek into her temple. She spun in its relaxed grip and jammed the heel of her hand upward into the thing's face. It connected with clammy, froglike flesh, and she recoiled, lips peeled back in a grimace of disgust. She whirled and flung herself up the stairs, Silver's name halfway out of her mouth. 

"Not you _too!"_ Silver, his back against the mainmast, was liplocked with an Ursid woman, running his hands down her smooth, arched back. His great coat lay in a puddle at his feet. She was eagerly peeling his shirt off his shoulders. "Cap'n, snap out of it! They're not real!" She yanked on the woman's arm and she turned, her brown Ursid eyes kaleidoscoping through color to pupilless, idiot grey. The Ursid-woman-thing opened its mouth once-- _twice._  A horizontal mouth and a vertical mouth, splitting its pointed, sluglike face into four pulsing sections, opened to reveal rows of razor-teeth, scissoring around mottled, pulsing gums. The mouth _beckoned_  even as it repulsed her, and she ripped herself away. The illusion of the Ursid woman knitted itself back over the sucking leech-face, and she returned to Silver. He moaned deep in his chest.

Bonnie remained horrorstruck for a moment, then a switch in her mind flipped. Teeth bared, she lunged at the thing again. 

_GET **AWAY** FROM HIM_

Pain exploded in the left side of her face, shooting through her head and down her neck as it snapped to the side. She staggered, blood leaking from her mouth from a cut on the inside of her cheek. " _Bitch,"_ she hissed, and spat a mouthful of blood. She lunged again, aiming the knife in her hand at the woman-thing's ribs. Something slammed into her stomach with a dull _whud_ and she staggered back again, doubled over, head and gut boiling with pain. Dragging a burning breath into her lungs, she screamed and came again, and was driven back a third time as a set of bladelike claws slashed her high on her neck and shoulder. " _You can't have him you **filth**_ ," she hissed, blood dripping from her mouth and the four deep slashes on her neck and shoulder. She darted around to Silver's cyborg side and yanked on his arm. "Cap'n get your gun out! Shoot her! You have to shoot her, Cap'n, she isn't real! Whoever you think she is, she isn't real! Shoot her! _Shoot her!"_ She pulled on the outer plate, struck it with a fist, tried to pry his hand away from the Ursid-woman-thing. Her hands brushed the thing's skin, and the gulf between sight-- supple skin dusted with a fine coat of fur-- and feeling-- cool, clammy, warty flesh-- flipped her heart and stomach. The rest of the crew on deck were embracing and embraced by their own women, naked and squirming sensuously, _vilely._ "Cap'n! Get your  _gun! Please! Gun gun gun GUN GUN!"_

Silver, eyes closed dreamily, mumbled a name around her mouth. "Daisy, me lass, Daisy..."

Bonnie whined high in her throat and whirled from him, her heart sinking in despair. She turned helpless circles on the deck, eyes flitting from one doomed man to another, embracing old loves and being embraced by slow, blissful ruin. 

_Gotta shake 'em how do I shake 'em how I do I get 'em out of their heads_

Her eyes lit on the lower yardarm of the mainmast. Thinking with the bottom of her brain, she sprinted to it and yanked loose the rope that held the yardarm fast. With all her might she heaved forward with the towline. The massive horizontal beam swung in a mighty arc, hitting Leonard, Lucky, and Gesser, laying them out. On the backswing it caught Barkly, headed up the stairs to the foredeck, locked in a striped Felid's embrace. The woman-things, finding their victims' minds ripped away from them by unconsciousness, shrieked, morphed into horrible sluglike shapes with stick-thin, bony arms, and hurled themselves overboard. Bonnie barked triumph.

But there were still the men below, and still _Silver._  The Ursid woman-- _Daisy--_ had all but shucked him out of this clothes. A whitecold knife of panic slid into her heart. "Will you _stop getting naked!"_  She yelled helplessly at him. "Just _shoot her, Ca--"_

An idea bloomed. The armory.

She yanked the huge ring of keys from the insensate Leonard's belt, dropping them twice in her haste, and jammed one into the locked door on the side of the raised foredeck. It would not turn. She made a guttural noise of despair in her throat. After an _eternity,_  she found a key that clicked the lock. She flung the door open. Pawed at the jumble of rifles, pistols, hand cannons, and rocket launchers inside, grabbed the biggest rifle she could handle. It was an old-fashioned one, one that would fire _bullets,_  not lasers; one that would make a big _boom._

_Please let this work oh please please we can't lose him I can't lose him_

The thoughts ran a frantic marquee through her head as she checked the barrel, cocked, aimed at the woman-thing.

"Sorry, Cap'n," she said, and fired.

The kickback nearly unbalanced her. The ringing aural aftershock of the boom slowly resolved into the agonized dying screams of the woman-thing. They were jagged glass in her mind, but she couldn't tear her eyes away from the grotesque mottled grey-pink thing writhing its last on the deck. Pale green gunk, thick and clotted, oozed from a chewed hole high on its side. The scream grew, split into many. Bonnie looked up as the slug things poured out of the cabin and soared through the rigging, twisting and thrashing if they had been shot. They dove off the starboard side of the ship, and the screams slowly quieted. The thing on the deck flopped, twitched, lay still. Silver blinked as if coming out of a dream, and stared down at the dead thing, still oozing steaming green guts.

She heard footsteps behind her. She turned slowly, feeling adrenaline leave her joints loose and muscles watery. Pain, pulsing dully in her head, shoulder, and gut, invaded her and slurred her words. Grey and the crew gazed at her stupidly, eyes huge in moon-pale faces.

"Everyone okay?" 

They nodded slowly. She nodded back, glanced at the galactic clock. An hour before muster. "Grey. Let's get breakfast started. We all need a good meal after this." She started shakily toward the galley. She would dump as much _northern lights_ as she could into the food, with a double helping for herself. They'd make one more stop before the Expanse, and she'd stock back up again, cost be damned. They-- _she--_ needed as much happy-floaty as they could _get._

"You're bleeding," Grey said dumbly.

She licked blood-caked lips with a blood-slick tongue. "I'll wash off before I cook." She remembered the men sprawled out on the deck. "Had to knock a few of the men out. See to them first." she gestured weakly toward Barkly, Leonard, Lucky and Gesser, just beginning to stir. "Then come help me."

She made her way down to the galley, leaning heavily on the railing with one hand, the other wrapped around her throbbing stomach.


	29. His Girl (ravenousgrue)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Little bit of blood/gore in this chapter.

It'd been a fine dream, he'd thought. He rarely had occasion to think of her anymore, and when he did the bite of melancholy was all but toothless, the image of her face indistinct. Silver would never forget her, the love of his life, the woman a man like him waited his entire _life_ to meet, but Daisy wouldn't have had him pining away for her in her absence, lonely and sad in a cold, empty bed.

And so the dream had been fine enough surprise and she was just as pretty as he remembered. She felt so real, even smelled a little bit like flowers though the scent was oddly generic, like the memory of a flower. But it was a dream, after all, and it was getting plenty of other things right.

Bonnie was in his dream and he paid her no mind. Flattering, and he'd be happy to have them both, but they could take turns: Daisy was _his girl_ and he'd _never_ shoot her, and he ignored Bonnie more pointedly, feeling a strange mixture of feelings about her, annoyance and an _unease_ that he didn't care for. Why couldn't he just _have_ this? It was just a dream, and a very nice one. He'd--

His one good ear was ringing and the coolness of space that seeped passed the atmo controls hit him like a bucket of water in the face, and he stared down at the corpse of the siren, nothing at all like Daisy's generous curves and soft fur. It came back to him in a powerful rush and he braced his hands on his knees as he felt his stomach knot and heave, but he managed to keep the contents locked away despite the loud retching noise that escaped his throat. Powers that be but the thing (a Siren, he reckoned, and a _big one_ , maybe the alpha female) stank, and after a few more halfhearted _chokes_ he spat on it's corpse and shakily hauled his trousers back on, glancing around, making sure there were no limp, smiling corpses in his vicinity.

Bonnie. _Where was Bonnie?_

She hadn't gone far and he could see she was bloody even from the back, and he struggled back into his shirt and then his coat before he moved beside her, wincing at the state of her. If not for her, they'd _all be dead_. He'd send out a broad signal warning folks about their presence. Silver had been expecting them closer to the edge of the Expanse, not deep in charted territory, but they'd lived to tell the tale. By the time they reached their last port, the stories would be void of all unsettling details, only the excitement remaining to entertain less adventurous spacers.

"Them cuts need lookin' after, lass," he said, his voice a bit thicker than he'd expected it to be. In an alarmed rush he wiped at his living eye with a hand, but there were no tears there despite how he sounded. That in itself made him feel a small flicker of despair, _no more tears for Daisy_ , but he ignored it, knowing it would fade as the Siren's influence did.

"Yeh saved _all_ our sorry hides, cub, includin' mine," he added just in case she balked, "'We all owe yeh a debt o'gratitude. Least I can do is return th'favor. Come along now, I'll use th' kit in me cabin. Those cuts look _deep_."

They needed to be _cleaned_ , the reek of the Siren a powerful one even a small distance away.

"Somebody get rid o'that!" he hollered, his voice cracking. No one snickered, either too rattled to care or too rattled to notice, and a few crewmen warily approached the body, "Just throw it overboard, this ain't a bloody _research mission_!"

_**Just a moment**_ , Mr. Grim made an appearance, his voice much softer than it usually was, **_I'd like to investigate_**.

"Whatever ye like, so long as it's off me ship sooner n'later," Silver said, clearly displeased but in no mood for an argument. He offered Bonnie a hand for support, his annoyance fading to simple concern, "Let me look after yeh, Bonnie. Y'can't grit'cher teeth through lacerations. I've tried."


	30. Owie (ahimsabitches)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning for blood for the next couple chapters.

Bonnie waved weakly at Silver as she eased down the galley steps. "I'm okay. 'S okay. I need to get breakfast started. The men need... food."

She didn't want to think about what had happened. She didn't want to be reminded of what she'd seen. She didn't want to dwell on wounds that would heal. She wanted to dive into the muscle memory of cooking, to blur out her mind in familiar, comfortable repetition. To smoke, to blot Einon from her. To forget how close they'd all come to oblivion.

  
**_Just a moment. I'd like to investigate,_  **Mr Grim said on the common frequency. Then, on hers: **_Good work, Bonnie. Thank you. Let the Captain look after you now. Those wounds may fester if you do not get them treated, and quickly. Obey your Captain's orders like you swore you would._**

Anger, quick and hot, lit up the space behind her eyes. _I wouldn't HAVE these wounds if you'd HELPED me. Whatever those things were, they were like you. Telepathic._

He did not answer her.

She sighed and sagged, anger flown in a gust of exhaustion that blew through her, and let herself be led to Silver's cabin.

Easing down onto the edge of his bed, babying her bruised guts, she looked down at herself. Fortunately the woman-thing hadn't slashed the side of the shirt with the pocket for the iocane. _That_  would have been an interesting next few hours. The other two pockets were empty. Small favors. The shirt was slashed well, bloodstained, but the rips could be sewn up and the blood could be mostly removed. Good. She liked this shirt.

Silver bustled around her, heavy brows drawn down and muttering under his breath. Less pirate captain now and more fussing mother hen. If she'd lost less blood, she'd have chuckled.

She felt the thick rubbery pads of Silver's cyborg fingers on her chin, one hooked under to lift and one pressed gently below her lips. His expansive face swam into view, close. He closed his living eye and she jumped as his cyborg eye flicked open like a little sunburst.


	31. Square (ravenousgrue)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.

The cuts weren't as bad as they looked, but they _were_ bad. _Deep_. They'd need to be  _thoroughly_ cleaned and then sealed, and if she _didn't_ scar he'd be amazed. Once they were home she could see a proper doctor, someone to knit up the cosmetic damage if she wanted, but for the rest of their trip she'd have the Siren's angry marks. Not an unimpressive scar to have by any means: she'd be the only one aboard.

It worried him that she'd got _close_ enough to be slashed by one, and it was hazy, her presence, until the siren's abrupt death had snapped him out of it. What had she been trying? He would've just started killing them if he'd been able, but it was moot since she'd been the only one on the ship who hadn't been drawn in.

He leaned back and drew his medkit closer, his expression suggesting he didn't think she was going to like what he had to say.

"Asked yeh up here in private because that shirt needs t'come off, lass. I've got t'clean out them cuts and close em up or yeh won't make it to the Expanse," he said, "D'yah have anythin'.... _under it?_ "

 

He was being as delicate as he could, and as an indelicate man, his attempt felt very rusty.

 

"T'ink of it as an even trade. Y'got an' eyefulla _me_ yeh didn't ask fer," he tried to joke, "Mine're bigger n'yers anyhow."

John had a sterilizer that looked like it'd been made a century ago. Hurt something awful but he'd not had an infection since he'd added it to his kit, and he didn't trust the newer ones.

"If'n y'need a moment t'cover up I can turn around," he added quickly, "Or I could get someone else yer more comfortable with. I swear t'yeh on me mother's life I won't take no liberties. Yeh saved me _life_ , Bonnie. I don't take it lightly."

He didn't feel up to explaining that his heart wouldn't be into ogling so soon after an encounter with the ghost of his dead lover, but he hoped she trusted him enough to at  _least_ save her life. Less _heroically_ , maybe, but still. Square was square.


	32. Sting (ahimsabitches)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.

Bonnie looked at him _hard._  She had on plenty of wrappings beneath the shirt, and even through the drugged, soupy haze of pain she could see there was no greed or desire, but _still._

She'd be a _fool_  to walk out now. The gouges the thing had left on her chest, neck and shoulder were already beginning to pulse with a deep, duller pain, a heat that would only grow if she didn't take off her shirt and let Silver help her.

But _still._

She'd sworn. And he was _not_  Einon.

Pulling in a slow, shaky breath, she lifted her shirt over her head, gritting her teeth against a groan of pain as the rent flesh on her chest, neck, and shoulder stretched. The wrap around her tits had caught most of the blood before it dripped down to her pants, but there were three narrow snaketrails of blood down her ribs that ended in little dark patches on her pants. At least they weren't white.

Silver tipped a bottle of something onto a cloth, then leaned over to her. Right before he pressed it to the cuts on her chest, the bitter, acrid burn of ethanol, and something else, cloyingly sweet, smacked her nose.

Then, _searing pain,_  shooting and curling like _fire_  out from the wound on her chest and shoulder, scorching its way down her chest, left arm, and up to torch the base of her brain _._  Her fists clenched into fists reflexively, gripping handfuls of the blanket on the bed. Her lips peeled back from her teeth in a snarl of pain, and she groaned. He held the cloth there, and she breathed as deeply as her bruised guts would allow.

"I just got girl-scratched, clocked in the face, and gutchecked by an overgrown slug," she snarled, "and _this_ hurts _way_  worse than _all of that."_


	33. Swipe (ravenousgrue)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.

Silver was passionless as he held the cloth to the cut, not reacting either way until she made her comment and he couldn't suppress a sympathetic, rueful chuckle.

"Might be the only person livin' t'get a swipe from a Siren and live t'tell the tale," he said, hoping she could take some comfort in that, "I'm hopin' y'tell the story a bit more _flatterin_ ', when the time comes."

He imagined it had been horrible at the time, but not too long from now, he'd hope that she could look back at it and _laugh_ , seeing all her crewmates writhing around with foul-smelling slugs.

"T'ought I was dreamin'," he said, looking sheepish, and not because of the pain he was causing her, tipping the disinfectant on the cloth and pressing it, merciless to her wounds, but because he felt some need to defend what was likely insane-looking behavior. He'd been out of his mind, to be fair, but... all the same, "If that particular lass had shown up in the flesh I'd have known it t'be madness quicker'n yeh please, but it's different in dreams."

He decided not to add how even in his dreams he'd felt Bonnie would be a fine addition to it. That was all he really remembered, and she was sour enough at it was about having to suffer his attention.

"What we all missed out on," he was trying to keep it light as he seared her wounds clean, the liquid slithering deep into her exposed, vulnerable flesh and biting down hard, "Is what sorta critter _Mr. Grim_ conjured up for himself."

It was Mr. Grim's own fault for eavesdropping, if he was. Besides, John had been thinking it already _anyway_ , and saying it out loud, he figured, made no difference.

"I was thinkin' somethin' more like a _fork_ ," he continued to joke, "Got t'fit t'gether _somehow_."


	34. Connect (ahimsabitches)

She looked up when he said _Siren._ Of _course_. She'd heard stories of Sirens, vicious, foul spawn of the Expanse, but since her parents' ship hadn't run into any the two times they'd entered the Expanse, they'd all but assumed they were as fanciful as the stories made them out to be.

"I didn't think Sirens actually existed. Sure as hell know better now," she said through gritted teeth, glancing down at the cuts covered by Silver's hand and the cloth, under which she was positive she could feel the flesh sizzling away. "And don't worry. I'll leave the part about you almost sticking your dick in a giant evil slug out." She hiked an amused eyebrow at him. "But I'm definitely going to tell everyone how  _passionately_  you were making out with it."

It would be a _story_ to tell later, with great relish, when she was not being flayed alive by _acid_.

What little bit of a smile she had faded as Silver's did and even his cyborg eye softened. She opened her mouth to ask him about his _particular lass_ , but something placed a gentle hand on her and stopped her. She wanted to know, but he didn't seem keen on digging up that old grave. She, acutely aware of the gravestones in her own head casting thick, crawling shadows, would let him volunteer the story on his own.

For everyone else but Yossarian, she decided, she'd do the same. The encounter was harrowing enough; they'd be ribbed enough for it when the story got out. Best leave those scabs unpicked to heal. After all, they still had a year left together. And she'd just worked herself over to Socrates' good side. No, that wasn't quite right. His _okay_  side. 

But eventually, she'd have to have a _talk_ with Yossi. 

 

Silver pressed the newly-wet cloth to her again, higher up on her neck, and the shrieking pain obliterated all thought for a moment. Despite herself, she coughed a laugh, the sound weak and thready, at Silver's _fork_ comment. She hadn't told him that her first impression of the bizarre creature was a towering telepathic spoon, and it genuinely amused her that they were on the same _wavelength._ She pressed a hand to her belly and groaned. "Don't make me laugh. Hurts."

Their eyes met, bloodshot green with mismatched brown/yellow, and Bonnie was acutely aware of the solid, steady pressure of his massive hand high on her chest. His fingers curved around the peak of her shoulder and his sausagey thumb rested against the side of her neck. The connection of their skin held no spark, no tension, but for a moment the only thing she could feel was the brush of his thumb against the delicate skin of her neck.

She flicked her eyes down and licked her lips, remembering the blood drying on her face. She wiped it gently on her hand, careful to avoid the bruised flesh where the Siren's fist? had connected with her right cheek and jaw. "How long until we're done? I'm going to make us a huge breakfast. We need it."


	35. Snooty (ravenousgrue)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mild warning for blood and sutures.

He'd expected her to ask and the story was on his lips but she demurred and he decided he was grateful. Another time, if it came up somehow, but not now. He needed to focus on _her_ , and the gaping lacerations required close attention. If he missed a bit and sealed her up, things might take a bad turn for her later.

John glanced in concerned when she put a hand to her belly again, wondering if something more serious was amiss but he met her eyes instead and he became keenly aware of how she felt, her skin very smooth and soft, almost hairless. The hair on her head was starting to grow out, which wasn't helping him stay neutral. He hadn't minded the short hair one bit, but longer hair had more movement, drew more attention to the planes of her face.

The moment passed and he cleared his throat, focusing on finishing up so they could get to the best part: _stitching her skin back together_.

"Stop yer fussin'," he chastised her, "What yer gonna be doin is sittin' tight an' lettin' yer stitches set. _I'll_ cover breakfast t'day, an' I won't hear no _argument_."

Silver gave her a stern look, "I'll _order_ yeh if I have to, but I'm _hopin_ ' it won't have t'come t'that."

Once he was satisfied that he'd just about _pickled_ her in disinfectant, he set the bottle and the cloth aside and pulled out a curved needle and a spool of smooth cording.

"I'm a fair hand at this, but just th'same, try not _t'wiggle_ ," he said, shifting his weight and scooting a bit closer to her, trying to be as steady as possible. He used his cybernetic hand for the delicate work, keeping her gently steady with his living one, whose thick fingers made delicate things extremely difficult. Daisy had been soft but she was long gone and Bonnie was _right here_ , warm and living. He flicked a look at her, unable to resist, and quickly slid his eyes back down again, zeroing in on his task. He was hunched over about _double_ , an uncomfortable pose for a man of his considerable girth, and with his tongue poking out the side of his mouth the more intently he concentrated, he looked _very_ far from imposing.

"These're th'fancy ones that help cuts seal up right quick," John said, "Y'won't need t'have 'em in but a few days. Young Mr. Grey and I can handle a few days, and I'm happy t'do it besides. Yer free t _'supervise_ , o'course, since it's _yer_ galley. I may have t'ask yeh t'leave when I make me mother's best dish, though."

He felt most comfortable attempting to make people smile, and he put on his snootiest ( _silliest_ ) look, as though he disdained the very _idea_ of her stealing a family recipe. John fully expected her to watch every step, although his mother would probably rip out his earring if she knew. Bonnie was crew! That was family enough.


	36. Oreen (ahimsabitches)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning for blood and (very) minor character death.

Wait, _stitches?_ She opened her mouth to _fuss_  more, to protest _it's just a_ scratch _, Cap'n, it doesn't need stitches, just slap a bandage on there and I'll be fine_  but the edge in his living eye and the tiny clicking lens in his cyborg eye closed her mouth. 

Following Silver's orders was a lot easier when she didn't disagree with them.

On her frequency, Mr Grim's voice; quieter, less _present,_  like a fuzzy holorecording: **_Be still. Remember Oreen?_**

She sighed, eyeing the curved needle Silver brought out. It glinted in the lamp he'd drawn closer to brighten the work he was about to do on her sliced skin.

Oreen had been a hunter/tracker, and a damned good one. A Canid, of course, whose delicate, graceful muzzle, nimble, wolfish ears, and long-seeing ocean eyes had cost her parents a _fortune,_ but she had been the best at what she did. She'd saved the team's lives in many ways many times, and had been loyal to a fault, staying with her parents even after they'd voluntarily entered the Expanse. Bonnie had admired the woman deeply, and still did. Had come as close to loving her as one could come in a wild, unmoored life where putting down roots in someone's heart was as possible as raising the dead and as wise as poking a sleeping Gorog with a pointed stick.

Shortly before Bonnie left the team, Oreen had been slashed in much the same way and in much the same place as Bonnie by a strange creature she'd described, around her feverish delerium, as a horse-sized crocodile with a beak. She'd given no indication that she'd ever seen the creature before. She'd done precisely as Bonnie had just tried to do; waved away fusses and ignored the new medic's insistence on a proper field dressing. Instead, she'd dumped most of a bottle of iodine on the wound and taped a large square of gauze there, and that had been that.

Four days later, Oreen collapsed.

The smell of the wound, rancid and corrupt and sweet-swampy, had hit all of them hard when the medic peeled back the haphazard bandage. Instead of closing on its own, it had festered into a gangrenous gaping maw on her chest, threads of angry purpleblack spidering out from the suppurating mess. She had died, keening and howling, as the infection boiled her blood to tarry black syrup.

The needle flashed and bit into her skin. She gritted her teeth, staring straight ahead and leaning her head to the side to give the immense Ursid an easier time at her wound. He made himself as small as possible, crouching and peering, but even so his presence dipped the bed significantly and his living hand was a warm, soft, _heavy_ stone on her back. 

The thought of giving over _her_  kitchen to someone else, even another Ursid, chafed her. But of all the people in the galaxy, she supposed it couldn't be in better hands. A slow, affectionate smile spread over her face as she watched him, looking very much like a child at a particularly difficult puzzle, brows thunderously furrowed, eyes focused, tongue poking out. "As long as it's still my galley, it's my rules, and if you're making _anything_  of your mother's you'll have to pry my cold dead corpse from the bench before I leave." She chuckled. The needle flashed again, and the chuckle ended in a clench of teeth. "I've never had _real_ Ursid cooking. I mean, not from a... full-blooded Ursid."

Silver's head was nearly tucked into the curve of her shoulder, and her eyes were drawn to the threadbare, stained bandana covering his close-cropped dark hair. His smell was good despite the sour tang of sweat and spent adrenaline. It was the loamy smell of wild earthy homeplaces, redolent with musky maleness. Somewhere in the warm dark folds of her brain, tucked into a crease that existed despite double dilution of her grandfather's bloodline, a bell rang once, softly. The reverberations echoed through her, warmth in their wake. She swallowed, grateful for the distraction of the tiny jabs of pain as Silver knitted her skin together.

"How are you gonna be a captain and cook at the same time? Grey's good, but he's not that good. I haven't had time to train him up proper yet."


	37. Scent (ravenousgrue)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.

He'd done his best to ignore the strong undercurrent of _Ursid_ in her scent, but this close, even with the cloying antiseptic to muddle it, he could smell her _just fine_ and it was a _mounting_ distraction. His hands stayed steady and his eyes were locked on the task at hand but he was well-practiced at masking how he really felt, and how he _really_ felt was how _nice_ it would be to indulge the urge to take a deeper _draw_ of her scent. It'd be stronger close to her scalp. _Or between her legs_.

_Just lust_ , he coached himself. He'd thought his long and indulgent 'vacation' to his favorite brothel would've taken the edge off of it but he was Ursid through and through and passion was all he knew. It was as much his greatest asset as it was his greatest vulnerability, but now was hardly an appropriate time. _Never_ _would be, either_ , he reminded himself sternly. She fancied the bo'sun and he wasn't going to step on the man's toes. John threw his weight around among the crew, but only where appropriate. More or less. It was her business, who she wanted to spend her off hours with, and as Captain his off hours were pretty much _never_.

He was glad when she started talking and a positively _lecherous_ smile flashed across his face, just briefly, at the phrase _full-blooded Ursid_. Though it was primed to exit his mouth, the deep-voiced insinuation that there was a _lot_ of full-blooded Ursid things she hadn't _experienced_ , he managed to just _chuckle_ , wanting _very much_ to be _done_ stitching her up. He didn't speed up, however. John wasn't going to do a poor job because he was a bit jumbled up from the siren encounter. And that's all it was. Lust and displaced feelings. They'd fade.

Her question made him look up at her, briefly, _very_ brief since it only made him more aware of how _close_ he was, and he bent back to his task before he answered. _Almost done_.

"I've done it plenty o'times in th'past," he assured her, "And Barkly can run th'ship just fine besides. This ain't the Expanse _yet_ , lass. Bloody _sirens_ aside, this is charted space. Nothin' that ol' seadog can't handle."

Even though Barkly wasn't present to appreciate his pun, he was _clearly_ pleased with it.

"Mr. Grey'll mostly be watchin', anyhow," John added, leaning back with a quiet groan of relief and cocking his head, closing his cyborg eye to give his handiwork an appraising look, "One more 'bout o'th'antiseptic and I'll bandage yeh up."

He didn't care if it seemed ' _excessive_ ': she'd been slashed by a _siren_. There was no such thing as _too careful_.

After another meticulous going over with the searing antiseptic Silver bandaged her up and fixed her with a stern look.

"I want these changed _twice a day_ while yer lettin' th'stitches set," he said, packing up his kit while he gave her his new orders, "Don't gotta be by me, but I'll be checkin' that it's done all the same. Yeh got attacked by a _legendary bloody space creature_ , so it t'ain't no sign a' weakness t'look after th'damage it did. _Now_ ," he closed his medikit and set it aside, resting his hands on his thighs. Well, one thigh and one grim metal approximation of a thigh, his grin broad and _cheeky_ , well aware how absurd it would be, for a Captain to ask the following of a crewman, "Permission t'start cookin' breakfast, Miss Bonnie."

He was eager to show off. Most of the crew already knew (and _appreciated_ ) his cookin but Bonnie hadn't so much as whiffed it. He was eager to impress her, even if it was superficially. After what she'd seen on deck, him necking with an Ursid woman twice her size, she'd probably already made some _assumptions_ about what sort of girl he liked. And it wouldn't be wrong, exactly: he just wasn't nearly so narrow minded and specific about what he liked. Daisy was special, was all. He hadn't had a serious relationship _since_ Daisy, sticking to brothel girls and the thrill-seeking sorts who were tickled in just the right place by the idea of getting cozy with a notorious pirate. Ex-pirate.

There was no denying he had a weakness for Ursid girls, though, and even if she didn't entirely _look_ it, Bonnie was very much that. He'd keep it all under his hat where it belonged, and he'd hope it would fade away instead of get too big to hide. Soon enough there wouldn't be time for flights of fancy, and the thought of stirring up any kind of relationship, even casual, with a crewman was... well, it made his stomach turn over uneasily. It was a blessing, that she fancied Leonard, and his interest was purely _instinctual_. He was a _man_ , not a beast, and though he often trusted his instincts, he knew when they were just causing trouble. When they ought to be ignored wholesale.


	38. Slow Down (ahimsabitches)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.

Her eyebrow climbed higher and higher as he talked, his parental concern masquerading poorly as commands from a captain. She kept an eyeroll at bay only through great force of will. She _wanted_ to tell him about all the times she'd been banged up, a couple times  _worse than this._ She wanted to tell him the times, more often than not, she'd patched herself up because her parents and the rest of the camp were too busy poring over some map or dissecting some creature. But she kept her tongue behind her teeth, because she knew it would come out sounding petulant, and well, _childish._

Normally it wouldn't have bothered her; being mistaken for someone younger than she was _helped_  in some situations, of course, especially when she was short of coin. Possibly because she found herself eager to _prove_  she could haul her own weight and more if need be, even though she'd just saved the _entire crew;_ possibly because the feeling his scent had stirred in her was as unexpected as it had been, Silver calling her _cub_ and ordering her to do things she'd known to do since she really _had_ been a cub rankled her.

"Permission granted, Cap'n, _if,"_ she fixed him with the stoniest glare she could muster, "you _stop_  treating me like a _cub."_

 She armed her shirt back on, only lifting her left arm as much as she had to to get it in the sleeve. The wound still stretched painfully, the skin now drawn tight over it. The blood, covering a good half of it, had congealed and half-dried. It would be a right bastard to get out, but she'd brought some ammonia, and good old-fashioned spit did more than people thought. She stood gingerly. She'd head down to the barracks, change, and put these clothes in to soak before... she...

Suddenly the room spun and she felt the blood drain from her, graying the edges of her vision and turning her cold. Nausea bloomed in her bruised gut. She groaned, stumbled. The hand, leaden and numb, she brought to her forehead, shook like a leaf.

_Delayed shock,_ she thought. _Must've lost more blood than I thought._

Her mother's words, spoken in jest but colored with sadness, rang in her ears: _A gaping chest wound is nature's way of telling you to slow down._

"I'mma need a minute, Cap'n," she slurred.


	39. Ornery Git (ravenousgrue)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.

His smile was close-lipped when she glared at him, and he _somehow_ managed not to grin. He only called her cub _because_ it rankled her, but if she was really _that_ cross about it, he'd... _consider_ making an effort to stop. For now, at least, they'd have a truce.

"Easy now," John said, heaving to his feet and keeping an eye her as she did the same, "Yeh just-"

  _-just about had your guts scooped out by a siren_ , but he didn't get a chance to say it because she crumpled, and he scooped her up after only a moment, wanting to help but also having a _strong_ aversion to the idea of being covered in vomit. He couldn't help but notice how _light_ she was compared to his _usual_ girls. She barely weighed anything and he moved her quick so she couldn't complain about his help, setting her back on the bed and feeling her forehead with the back of his hand.

"Y'tell me whatcher need from down below and I'll have Mr. Grey fetch it for yeh," John said, paternal concern burning away all others, "You stay _put_ , Miss Bonnie. Yeh saved all our sorry arses: let us keep an eye on yers fer a few days."

He blinked, having honestly _not_ meant that the way it sounded, and he chuckled sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck.

" _Heh_ , well," he said, "You get my meanin', I'm sure. _Now_ ," he poured her some water from the bedside table and set it close to her, then shoved a spare pillow under her feet before he realized he'd put her on top of the covers, which weren't much bloody use to him underneath her. Not wanting to jostle her more, he stood and shrugged off his coat, laying it over her with a look of warning, "No back talk, remember. Yeh promised me on yer life. You stay snug n'warm here, I'll set Mr. Grey t'look after yeh, and I'll bring yeh up some breakfast t'see if yeh can stomach it."

His tone brooked no argument. She'd _collapsed_ in front of him, so there was no downplaying it now.

"Yeh'll be back in action quicker if yeh aren't an ornery git," he told her, "I was out nearly a _year_ after _this_ happened," he gestured to his obviously artificial limbs, "So I reckon a few days t'recuperate from a siren attack ain't so much t'ask. _Stay put_ , Bonnie. If'n yeh don't want t'be called _cub_ , don't act the part."

He'd added that very purposefully to irritate her, but to also make his point. John understood _entirely_ the urge to shake off even the most egregious wounds, but it _never_ helped. Orders given, he left her be, and Grey was quick to replace him, having been promoted to Bonnie's 'nurse' until the Captain said otherwise. He was apologetic, but also relieved that he wouldn't have to share the kitchen with the much larger, much  _louder_ Ursid on board.

True to his word, John returned to his cabin some time later, sending Mr. Grey down to clean up after him. Normally he didn't mind doing it himself, but she'd given him a big scare with that little collapse of hers. Bigger than he'd thought at first. It was just poorly timed and he was making connections that didn't otherwise have a correlation. He'd feel better if he looked after her, it only to reassure himself that she was all right and not trying to grit her teeth through internal bleeding. Even _quarter_ Ursid, she was tough. She'd bounce back. He'd replaced his coat with a long apron and he set her breakfast plate on the nightstand, and his own (a second helping, since he'd ate his first with the crew to assure them everything was all right) nearby, freeing his hands a moment so he could untie the apron and drape it over a chair.

"Made the mildest thing I know how t'make, so it should be kind t'yer poor guts," he told her, "How're yeh holdin' up, lass?"


	40. Doctor Grey (ahimsabitches)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning for blood; warning for vomit.

Her strength had fled her _completely_ and she had nothing left to argue about, so she let him stretch her out on his bed (which smelled like him) and drape his coat over her (the collar of it landed just below her chin and it smelled very _much_ like him) and chide her and call her cub and she said "I'm _not_  an ornery git, _you are,_ " but it came out a weak wheeze. The world withdrew from her and she sensed everything from the other end of a very long hallway until she thought she heard Grey. The cool slip of water poured down her throat and coated her stomach with cool velvet.

It felt _divine_  for a minute or two, then her stomach turned traitor in a wrenching spasm and she leaned over the edge of the bed, pain in her shoulder and gut secondary, for a moment, to the urgent need of her stomach to eject its contents.

"Ah shit, sorry, Miss Bonnie," Grey said, his voice deeper, surer, devoid of its usual nervous waver. "That's a good color, though. If it were _bright_ red, we'd have a problem. That's just blood you swallowed. Lie back now; I need to make sure you're not bleeding into somewhere that's not your stomach." 

She flopped back against the pillows, puffing up a burst of Silver's scent, but there was no room in her brain for anything other than the drilling screws of pain in her chest, neck and shoulder caused by her sudden movements. Grey did not make matters any better when he peeled her shirt up and began _prodding_ her sensitive belly with his thick, hoof-capped fingers. She yipped at him through a raw throat.

"Well, you're definitely bruised," he said almost absentmindedly, taking inventory of her in speedy flicks of his doebrown eyes. "But I don't feel any hardness or tightness. If the pain ever gets localized to one spot and feels like you're being stabbed, you tell me right away, okay, Miss Bonnie?"

She nodded and he pulled her shirt down and the coat back up. Grey bustled around her, cleaning up her bloodied face, cleaning up the puddle of her vomit on the floor, pulled off the bloody shirt (winning a weak snarl from her as he moved her left arm), then the wraps, and then she was bare-chested but Grey had somehow matured twenty years in an hour-- had it been an hour? Or five minutes?-- and she trusted him, or was too exhausted not to. He worked her gently into a clean shirt, insisting she keep the wraps off for the sake of the stitches. Any pull or squeeze of the skin could damage them. He said this with the toneless professionalism of a man who'd weathered three times the years of doctoring the young Sileni had been alive, and Bonnie marveled muzzily at him. He perched gently on the edge of the bed, sagging it considerably less than Silver had.

"How's your stomach feeling?"

"Better, I think," she croaked. 

"Here," he held out his three-fingered hand, upon which rested a small white circular pill. "This is hydrocodone. For the pain. Wait to take it until you get some food on your stomach. It'll knock you right out, so don--"

The door clicked open and Silver squeezed in, followed by the scent of _food,_ of good things she knew she could place when her head wasn't a ball of drowsy pain. Silver and Grey exchanged words, and Grey trotted out, leaving the pill on the nightstand by the glass of water. She craned her head over to the nightstand as far as it would go without moving her body, sniffing at the plate of food with small, quick breaths that wouldn't stretch her stitches too much. Silver settled himself on the edge of the bed.

She offered a logy smile. "I threw up on the floor," she said ruefully. "I'm sorry. Grey cleaned it up." 

The more she smelled the food, the _better_  it smelled and the more her stomach churned, this time with hunger. _Make up your mind,_  she scolded it, glancing at the plate.

"But I think my stomach's settled now. At least I hope it is. That smells _really_ good. I'm a little disappointed that my first real Ursid meal'll probably taste like bile and blood." She swallowed, trying to clear out the rust and bitter acid from her mouth and throat. "What did you make?"


	41. Edible (ravenousgrue)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.

He was glad to see her no worse for wear, nice and cozy and well-looked after in his absence, and he took a bite of his own meal before he answered her question. He hadn't thought she'd ask for some reason -- he forgot that unlike most of the crew, she had an interest in his cooking beyond _eating it._

"Don't worry 'bout the floor," he said, waving his hand dismissively, "And you've a few more days of real Ursid meals while yeh _convalesce_. As fer yer brekky, it's me own take on an omelette. Hearty is important but too rich weighs fellers down. _Smaller_ fellers," he amended, excluding himself for obvious reasons, "So this is 'un is a crowdpleaser fer fellers lookin' ahead to a long, hard day. Or fer lasses who blow holes in sirens. Go on an' have a taste, an' no offense taken if yer stomach disagrees. Just try t'aim fer the floor."

She'd had her shirt changed, he noticed _very_ privately, but he was more interested in her _face_ just now, eager to see how she reacted to his cooking. It was something he'd come up with himself, and his mum had deemed it 'edible', which was all the endorsement he'd needed to consider it a success.

"An' don't worry if'n yeh can't finish," he said, "I can take care a' _that_ , too."

He flashed her a grin and stole another bite off his own plate. If she wasn't too impressed with this one, he had an entire _arsenal_ and three meals a day for a few days to do it. Best to start off _slow_ , though, if she was still _throwing up_. John was _very_ aware that there was no conceivable reason for him to seek her approval other than some obvious ones, but it was innocent enough on the surface and once he'd indulged himself, got it out of his system, it'd be fine.

John was _very_ glad she was all right.


	42. ...Purp? (ahimsabitches)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.

Gingerly, stiffly, she pulled herself up and reached for her plate. Saliva squirted into her mouth as she sniffed. Even through the residue of blood and antiseptic she smelled buttery eggs, salt pork, the chunky feta cheese she'd found stuffed deep into the cooler and over which she'd peeped with delight, garlic, and onions on top; and below, tomatoes, mustard greens and...purp?

She scooped a small forkful into her mouth and closed her eyes. Yes, purp. It complimented the cheese beautifully and offset the rest of the savory flavors, throwing each of them into cyclical focus. She _purred_ with pleasure and swallowed gratefully.

The food hit her stomach and she held her breath, waiting for it to decide. For a terrible moment her stomach cramped and roiled, but the feeling passed. She sighed with relief and took a bigger bite. And another. And another. Hunger roared to life in her and suddenly her plate was empty but she wanted to keep tasting it and she almost licked the juice off the plate but Silver was watching her attentively, the smile on his face reined in.

"That was _delicious,_ Cap'n, thank you," she said earnestly, her mood and energy both lifted by the meal. She almost asked for more but her stomach was just a shade below full and she didn't want to put it through any more _rigor_ than it had already endured. Besides, like he'd said, she'd have _more._ "Sitting on my ass for a few days is going to be as fun as watching paint dry, but if I'm gonna eat like this while I do it, maybe it won't be so bad." Making him smile made _her_  smile, made her _beam,_ and she suddenly found it _incomprehensible_ that the expansive gap-toothed grin belonged to the same man who'd not two weeks ago casually added a threat of murder of his entire crew to his storied and sordid history.

 _Who are you_ really, _Cap'n?_ She wondered, then wondered if Mr Grim had heard her. Then, for the first time since he'd mentioned it in the galley, she remembered his offer:  _I shall delight in helping you cultivate this most fruitful ability as long as we're together. Should you choose it._

Even if she _could_  learn to do what Mr Grim did, did she really _want_ to? It was _invasive,_  the feeling of having your mind read, as if someone much too broad was trying to squeeze through a doorway much too small into a room much too crowded to accommodate them. Even benign Mr Grim's presence was slithery and uncomfortable, overfilling and swelling her head.

Thinking of the Bonnie-shaped siren she'd seen Yossarian with, she decided there were things in peoples' minds she'd rather _not_ know about.

She cleared her throat and glanced down at the bandage on her chest, to give herself something to look at. Pale pink rosettes, in two rough lines, had bloomed on the part of it not covered by her shirt. The wound beneath hummed with pain, but it was the toothless, sterile pain of a wound well-cared for. When Grey came in to change the dressing, she'd ask him to fetch her knapsack. There were herbs and extracts there, things that, when made into a poultice, would soothe pain and speed healing. Better than a pill.

Thinking of her own wounds reminded her that she wasn't the only one who'd gotten out of the siren attack unscathed. 

"How are the men? Barkly and Leo and Gesser and Lucky? I hope I didn't knock their heads too badly. If they have concussions, they need to stay awake. I have things for tea that'll help them stay awake and keep swelling down. They really shouldn't be doing anything too strenuous, especially Leo. I know he's got a hard head but the yardarm caught him right on the side here--" she touched the side of her head, right above her ear, where in bugbears, the skull was thin and seamed to allow for a larger ear canal, "--and I _heard_  the hit and he _really_ ought to take it easy, at least for a day..." 


	43. Linger (ravenousgrue)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.

She loved it and pride swelled in his chest, and once she was done (before him, this time!) he cleared their plates away from the bed, wondering if he had any other excuses to linger instead of just fetching Mr. Grey again. Thankfully, she had a topic of conversation, and he hid the sourness that crept into his mood at the mention of Leonard. He had nothing _against_ Leonard and he'd only known her two weeks, and he knew most of his ill-temper about it was simply because he was a sore loser. Even in contests that weren't really contests. He'd be a piss-poor pirate if he wasn't voraciously competitive, after all, and she deserved better than to be thought of in those terms besides.

"The lads're all in one piece," he said, "An' now Mr. Grey'll be seein' to 'em, since he looked after you so well."

John pat her knee, a little awkward, but reassuring.

"Leonard is a tough bugger," he said, forcing himself to face it head on, "Y'won't have t'worry 'bout him, an' he's got a wee one t'get home to besides, so he won't let a lil' _bump on th'noggin'_ stop 'im. D'yah want me t'send him in t'see yah? Everyone's askin' after yeh but I've backed 'em off fer now so's yeh can rest an' keep yer dignity. They're a pack o'vultures if'n yeh don't wrangle 'em right."

She'd probably prefer his presence, anyhow, and now that she was out of the woods she really didn't have a reason to linger in his cabin. John would've _liked_ a shot, and mayhap he'd still get one, but for now he wasn't going to let himself grumble about it.

He could throw the damned bugbear overboard if he was angry enough, and he'd take solace in that if nothing else.

"The fellers that got beaned're on orders t'take it easy anyhow," he said. John shifted his weight like he meant to get to his feet, but he didn't just yet, just in case, for some reason, she wanted him to stay and chat, "I could go git 'im fer yah now, if yeh like. Leonard. Didja..."

He cleared his throat and shook his head. No, he wasn't going to ask if she'd seen who his siren had looked like. John could bloody well _imagine_ and he didn't need the vivid mental image it would conjure up.

"Nevermind. Should I git 'im?"


	44. Healing (ahimsabitches)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.

Silver seemed to want to say something, but he negated it with a shake of his head and she didn't press. "I suppose you should turn the vultures loose. Not like I had too much dignity to begin with anyway." she chuckled.

Truthfully, she wanted to see the crew, to make sure they were all right. She'd done little more than ask on the verge of unconsciousness, and they'd done little more than stare at her in shock. She hadn't spoken to Leonard or either of the other three whom she'd knocked out, and though she believed Silver, she wanted to see them for herself. To make _sure._

Though Silver was captain and the crew's safety was explicitly _his_  responsibility, it was _her_  responsibility to keep them well-fed. That alone, the knowledge that they'd wither and weaken without her, was usually enough to grow a pearl of vaguely motherly affection for them in the same way she liked the regulars the pubs and inns at which she'd worked. But even though Socrates didn't like her, even though Yossarian liked her a little _too much,_  this crew was, as pirates and mercenaries went, as polite, friendly and respectful as she could ask for. More importantly, they'd accepted her as a crewman-- an equal-- and, with the exception of Yossarian, if they'd had _designs_  on her, they'd kept them tightly lidded.

Few men did that, and fewer did for as long and with as much grace as these men did.

They were a good crew. Good men. And she was grateful to have them. 

Silver left. A few minutes, Leonard and Barkly came in. She leaned forward, her eyes flicking from Leonard's to Barkly's. When she was satisfied that both men's pupils were the same size, she sat back and grinned broadly. "Glad to see you two on your feet."

"Glad to see you at all, Miss Bonnie. We were worried." Barkly said, his voice modulated and face carefully neutral. 

She flapped a hand nonchalantly. "The Cap'n patched me up proper. I'll be back in the kitchen in no time."

"Don't hurry. Please," Leonard said, holding his furred hands up in a double stop-gesture.

Bonnie blinked at him. "What's _that_ supposed to mean?"

Leonard's small oildrop eyes nearly disappeared in a fanged half-moon grin and a mass of wrinkles. "Only joking. Captain Silver's cooking is _good,_  though, I can't deny that."

Bonnie jutted her jaw. "I _will_ hit you with a yardarm again."

"It's not a competition, Bonnie," Barkly said, white whiskers twitching.

"No, it's not, but..."  _Yes it is._ "Nevermind. The Cap'n said Grey's looking after you. He's doing okay? He's not too overwhelmed? Is he in the kitchen at all?"

"Mister Grey has turned into _quite_ the proficient medic," said Barkly. "His orders are to tend you, primarily, and monitor us; it seems he's done both with a great amount of deftness and skill. It seems his found his niche."

"That's good," Bonnie said, a note of sadness edging into the sincerity in her voice. "I'll miss my kitchen aide, though."

The door opened. Grey's shaggy head poked in around a spill of hushed voices. "I'm coming back to the kitchen as soon as you're well, Miss Bonnie. Mister Barkly? Mister Leonard? I need to change Miss Bonnie's bandage. Could you..."

"Of course, lad," Leonard said. To Bonnie: "Thank you." The smile on his face was small but heartfelt.

She nodded, patting the great rough-skinned hand he'd laid on her shoulder. Barkly thanked her with a meaningful dip of his head and a smile that was, amazingly, broader than Leonard's.

Grey squeezed around them as they left, as if reluctant to open the door any more than it absolutely had to be. Bonnie leaned over and spied a press of faces at the door right before Grey closed it. Barkly's authoritative bark was muffled but audible: "Clear off, you lot, and back to work! Visit Miss Bonnie on your own time!"

She and Grey exchanged smiles as he checked her wound. She showed him how to crush yarrow, St John's wort, witch hazel, and aloe vera into a paste and spread it over the stitched flesh. His mouth turned down skeptically and he eyed the pill, untouched by the water glass, but he indulged her and she was glad because soon the aloe did its work and breezy coolness eased into her skin. 

"We'd be dead without you, Miss Bonnie, or worse," he said suddenly, attention focused on reapplying a strip of woven tape down over her shoulder. "We all owe you our lives."

Bonnie gazed at the young Sileni, watched the muscles of his jaw ripple under the beginnings of his beard, watched the curious oblong pupils flit and flick. "Hey. I was saving my own arse as much as I was saving yours. I couldn't have piloted this ship on my own. If you owe me anything, Grey, it's a promise to take a stab at medical school once you get home. You're a brilliant medic."

He shrugged, the familiar uncertain quirk to his mouth and twitch of his shoulder returning. "Mum's a people-doctor. Da's a farm-animal-doctor." He finished her bandage, straightened. "Did...what did you see? Did you see...I mean, we all were..." His wringing hands fought battles in front of him, a deep crimson blush in his cheeks. Bonnie smiled.

"I saw what I saw, and if you really want to know, I'll tell you. But I'm just as happy keeping that to myself. For as long as you want."

Grey's body visibly relaxed. " _Forever, please,_ " he bleated. 

Bonnie threw back her head and laughed as hard and long as her aching stomach would allow. "Done."

The rest of that day and into the evening, the crew wandered into Silver's cabin in twos and threes to see her. Gesser the birdlike Symphalian clacked his beak in appreciation. Yossarian, effervescent grin ever-present, offered to compose a ballad in her honor. Even Socrates peered around the door behind Lucky the buglike Crex. Bonnie waved. "Still alive, Socrates." 

"Weel t'at's a pisser," he rasped, not altogether maliciously. 

The crew and she talked about Silver's cooking, about her cooking, about the ship, about the final port of call before the Expanse, about the radiation storm they'd passed through... anything and everything except the siren attack. Hesitant smiles and nervous glances disappeared when they realized Bonnie wasn't out to _out_ them, to grind salt into the still-fresh wounds of their close brushes with sucking death disguised as wanton lust, as undying love.

By the time Grey delivered her dinner and a change of bandage, exhaustion lay over her like a coat far thicker, warmer and fuzzier than Silver's. She ate while he worked, both in companionable silence. The food was _good,_  as good as breakfast, and it reminded her that she had not seen Silver all day. 

Of course not. He was Captain, temporarily cook as well, and he'd spent more than enough time with her that morning. Disappointment was a quiet but insistent knock on the inside of her skull, and it stayed even after Grey turned down the lamp and bade her goodnight.

She heaved a sigh and scooted under the covers, stirring up Silver's scent again. Heart giving a little jump, she rolled over gingerly, buried her face into the pillow that had been supporting her, and sucked in a huge lungful of _Ursid_ , of _Silver_. She shivered and mewled as something warm and bright was dumped into her bloodstream, slid through her, and pooled into a ball deep and low in her belly. 

She blinked and heaved herself upright, horrorstruck at her own behavior. _You_  idiot, _what are you_ doing? _This is_ John Silver, _your_ Captain. _Even if he weren't a pirate and your_ boss, _he wouldn't want you anyway, not a runty halfbreed like you. You're a cub and you'll always_ be _a cub to him. Not worth his time._

Still, oh, still...

There was nobody else in the room; nobody else to know. The men had gotten at least a few minutes of illicit bliss. She deserved a little of her own.

So she burrowed further under the roughspun blankets, curled herself into as tight a ball as her sore guts and chest would let her, and drifted off into dreamless sleep cocooned in Silver's scent.

And the scent of Silver's breakfast woke her that morning, as it did the next three mornings. Flesh knitted, bruises rainbowed through purple to black and green, then sullen yellow, and Bonnie's strength returned. Every night, the pillow smelled a little more like her and a little less like him, and she wondered what he would think when he finally climbed back into his own bed. 

Shaking her head to drop that dead useless thought, she focused on applying the bandage over her newly stitch-free flesh. There would be scars, but she decided she'd keep them. Grey gave her one last appraising peer, nodded. "Healed well. You should be completely healed in a couple weeks. That was fast."

"I told you that poultice works wonders," she said as she gently wound the wrap around her chest, leaving it looser than she would otherwise. 

Grey pursed his fuzzy lips. "I think your Ursid genes have more to do with it."

"Whatever you say, doc." She tipped him a wink. "Ready to get back into the kitchen? I sure as hell am." She stretched gingerly.

"Let me go clear it with the Cap'n."


	45. Rapturous (ravenousgrue)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.

It'd been a busy few days with less than ideal sleep, but John was used to hard days, and for much longer stretches, and it was worth the inconvenience to ensure that their current _MVP_ was fully healed and ready to get back to work. He'd had a harrowing twenty-four hours after she'd first been slashed and stitched up, his dreams plagued with terrible images of flailing tentacles writhing out of her gaping, putrid wounds. He'd been very thorough, and the wound was healing clean, and she'd followed orders and rested. The dream had haunted him the next twenty-four hours regardless.

And with Grey so busy being a medic (and a good one, which had surprised the Captain as much as it had everyone else) he'd had full command of the kitchen, pulling out all the stops since it was only a few days, making all his best dishes with the parallel aim of emptying their stores a little before their final resupply. That way, Bonnie would have even more freedom to pick and choose how she wanted to stock her kitchen. It stung her pride, he knew, to hear the crew crowing about _his_ cooking, but he had an unfair advantage there: his cooking had been good since _before she'd been born_ , and he'd only improved since then.

Grey came to see him as he was in the midst of prepping for dinner, and after hearing Grey's case, Silver grinned and nodded. He was eager to get back into his own bed, to be sure, but he was also eager to see Bonnie up on her feet and back to doing what she did best.

He kept prep going, watching Grey scamper off a moment, and was just about ready to start cooking when Bonnie came back down.

"Yer just in time t'help me make me famous Bonza Beast stew," he said, his living eye practically alight with a _deep_ familial pride, "C'mon now, hop to it. Get them veggies chopped while I get th'meat sorted."

No _how-do-you-do_ and no stepping lightly around her. Grey said she was ready to be back to work, and so he'd treat her like she was unless she told him different. Some folks didn't appreciate his approach, but she was Ursid. She might appreciate the implied nod to her recovery, the confidence in her abilities (and toughness) that he was acknowledging. Silver was a big presence in the kitchen but despite how much physical (and otherwise) space he took up, he was nimble and aware, never bumping into her or accidentally spilling into her space. Learning to navigate regular-sized accommodations as an enormously-sized person had started back in the Academy, and he was a very old hand at it now.

"Not _too_ finely now," he said, his cybernetic arm whirring loudly as it started to receive complex and quickly alternating tasks. It was almost an unfair advantage, with it hard wired to his brain, barely like using a tool at all and just an extension of himself, " _Chunky_ , like someone with a big mouth s'gobblin' it up."

He clacked his jaws together once, _powerfully_ , for emphasis. It was an Ursid dish _for_ Ursids. _Spicy_ , but balanced enough to be palatable to others, and very, very hearty and tender. His mother made it best, but he was determined to get her to admit his was at least as good as hers the next time he saw her. Maybe Bonnie could be his secret weapon. It was a dish that his mother traditionally made for travelers who stopped at her inn. Travelers, specifically, who'd come an exceptionally long way. It was the only time she made it and he'd heard many a harrowing tall tale as a cub over bowls of Bonza Beast stew.

"The lads'll be glad t'have yeh back," he told her, able to talk easily and without distraction while his hands, living and cybernetic, worked busily to prep enough meat for the stew. To feed the whole crew he'd need a lot, and he was making extra since most fellers were going to want seconds, "It's a mite nerve wrackin' t'be at risk of pissin' off the feller who makes yer meals."

His mother would be absolutely _horrified_ by how casually he was showing off a family recipe, but Bonnie being Ursid, he thought, was an appropriate exception. That, and after decades of closely guarding it, he was keenly aware that he was middle aged and had yet to find (or produce) another Ursid to pass it on to.

Bonnie would do, and he wouldn't make a big fanfare about it. If she'd learned enough about Ursid culture from her father she might realize what a grand gesture it was, but if she didn't, he'd prefer it that way. It was only a _cooking recipe_ , after all, and there were so few of them it pained him to think of the recipes that would be lost by Ursids who took them to their graves.

"Get them veggies in early," he said, dumping shells from the creatures he was shelling for meat into a boiling pot, getting some stock to mix in later, "I want 'em this stock in soon."

There were even _eggs_ set out. The stew had a lot of complex ingredients, and laid out on the bench, they didn't look like they'd combine well _at all_. If anything, it looked slightly _vile_ at first glance.

He would never tire of people taking nervous, tentative bites, watching their carefully rehearsed polite expressions melt away into something rapturous.


	46. Juniper (ahimsabitches)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.

She stepped into the galley, _her_  galley, but it didn't _smell_  at all like hers and Silver moved through it like he'd built it himself and she suddenly felt _very much_ like the cub he called her, but she stuck her chest out, tipped her chin up and donned her apron like armor. Silver was already deep into prep, and he'd laid out a pile of produce by a cutting board. She took the _good_  chef's knife down from the magnetic block on the wall and gave it a few quick swipes along the dowel-shaped sharpener, letting the familiar _swip swip swip_ of metal on metal help the gears in her brain snap back into true.

_His_ gears, clicking and whirring with blurring speed, jerked her eyebrows up and she said "Aye, Cap'n" much more quietly than she'd meant to. She bent to her task, trying not to think about the fact that he'd been cooking for _years_  before she was born, an indeterminate length of time with half a kitchen's worth of equipment hardwired into his brain, and she had just come off almost five days of complete bedrest with a barely-healed chest wound that still pinged pain through her when she raised her arm high or flexed her left pectoral.

No. No excuses. 

Onions, peppers of a few varieties, tubers from several different planets, bulbous cloves of garlic as big as Silver's hands, an unfamiliar leekish vegetable, even a rutabaga the size of her head fell apart into even cubes under the quick, fluid flashes of her knife. It took her a bit longer than she'd liked to finish, but she _was_ sporting four great harrow ditches on her chest and neck. She dumped the heaping cutting board into the stock. Silver directed her through the kitchen, through several more tasks, and she realized with an amused chuckle that she was taking _orders_  from someone _else_ in _her own_  kitchen.

_Not mine today,_  she thought. Silver's bearing had changed once again, subtly. He was not Captain, nor was he simply Silver. He was expansive, easy, jolly, and _happy._  He was  _Ursid_ today, Ursid in his element, and it showed. Every line of his body was alive with generations of his kin, moving through muscle memory and bone-written wisdom that was known without being _thought_  about.

And she, cut off for the most part from the rich black silt of collective knowledge by the choices her forebears made, was a mere half-shadow cast by her mother and grandmother, a blemish on Silver's sun.

_Oh get over yourself. Since when did you ever let someone intimidate you in your own goddamn kitchen?_

Since never, but she'd never cooked alongside a full-blooded Ursid before.

She pasted on a smile, chuckling at his comment which had echoed her own the first day on board. "All _you_ have to do is _look_ at them crosswise. I had to threaten to _poison_  them. And I can _still_  feel Socrates sneering at me behind my back sometimes."

Between tasks, she snuck glances, sniffs, and tastes of his Bonzabeast stew. She'd had Bonzabeast plenty of times before; the meat was versatile and not particularly difficult to cook, but some of the things he dumped in (most notably the eggs and the stalky leek), she wouldn't have chosen to pair with it. She kept her mouth shut and cycled up her senses to take in as much of the process, the ingredients, the technique, and the dish itself as she could. They kaleidoscoped past her in flashes of fire, whiffs of scent, the purring crunch of a knifeslice, and she packed it all away safely in the back of her brain to pick apart and put back together that night.

The great stockpot, bigger around than two of her, simmered merrily over the stove, and Silver's back was turned. He'd talked at her most of the time, injecting absentminded instructions and comments about this ingredient and that technique into a steady stream of chatter about his mother, his family, and their cooking. For the moment, he'd fallen silent, focused on deboning what looked to her like a devilfish. 

Arming sweat from her forehead, she leaned over the pot and inhaled. Something about the stew had been bothering her for a while and she couldn't, for her life, figure out what. The aroma was robust and tangy, a riot of flavor that was outside of her experience but _good,_ as usual. She dipped a spoon in, sipped, rolled the thick broth around in her mouth. It was solid, balanced well, almost perfect, but...

Knowing she'd know it when she saw it, she slunk to the spice rack and spun it, eyes flitting over the labels. They lit on what she was looking for and she snatched it, casting furtive glances at the plane of Silver's back. 

_Better to beg forgiveness than ask permission,_  she thought as she dumped a good half of the bottle of tiny dark purple juniper berries into the pot. They would take a little while to cook down and do their work, so Silver would-- hopefully-- not catch the scent of them right away. Once they did, they'd build an aromatic bridge between the robust flavors of the meat, peppers, and garlic and the less _pushy_ flavors of the lobsterfish, the leek, the tubers and the egg, filling the dish out and ensuring that no flavor overpowered another. Juniper was also a decent anti-arthritic. Silver was well into middle age and hadn't exactly led a sedentary life. He didn't look like he was in pain, but it couldn't hurt.

She replaced the bottle of juniper as Silver turned back to the pot, and she continued to keep her mouth shut and eyes front as the dinner bell rang and the crew swarmed in. Gently massaging her sore chest, she scooped herself a bowl and took her place beside Silver, nerves jangling. If he liked it, she'd be vindicated. Able to take her licks and bounce right back, like one of the crew. Able to pull her weight, to muscle more of a place for herself in her grandfather's-- and Silver's-- birthright. 

She'd be, finally, n _ot a cub._


	47. Not Cub (ravenousgrue)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.

Something was _different_ about her that he couldn't quite place, not at first, and it wasn't until he reached over her head for something (easy to do since he had so much  _clearance_ ) that he realized what it was. She smelled different. _Better_. It took all his willpower not to take a big obvious _whiff_ \-- for curiosity's sake and nothing more! -- and he just let what he'd smelled turn over in his brain instead.

When he figured it out his blood ran cold. It was _him_. She smelled like _him_ , or at least a _shade_ of him, the cumulative scent of full-blooded Ursid that drenched everything he spent time in (or on), and it had blended so _fantastically_ with her own he hadn't even noticed right away.

This, he decided, was _deeply_ unfair. Humans had very inoffensive scents in general, unique to each one but mild and unassuming. He'd never been driven to distraction by a human's scent and it was why he never chased those particular skirts. Bonnie's scent was more Ursid than it was human, but still gently subdued. He'd come to like it, but now it had gone beyond just a pleasant uniqueness: if anything his scent _complimented_ hers.

And there were other, more _primitive_ connotations that _socially_ meant nothing, but deep in his brain the fire spread. She was too _small_ , though! Humans were too small, too  _breakable_. His good hand could cover the width of her back!

He poured all of his sudden _energy surge_ into something _much_ more appropriate, _cooking_ , and it wasn't until they were finally done that he noticed she'd gotten one over on him. She'd _added_ something and he narrowed his eyes at her, noticing that she was making a real _effort_ not to make eye contact with him. He'd babbled incessantly through constructing the stew, giving her the rich history that went with the rich ingredients, giving her tips and tricks where it seemed she might benefit, but now he was deathly silent.

She'd tampered with his meal, a _family recipe_.

Juniper berries, he was sure. She'd added them right near the end, slipped them in while he was in the midst of another anecdote, his back to the pot. Silver helped her portion things out to the crew before they both sat down, and he gave her a very pointed look as he sniffed his bowl and then took a large bite.

_Oh no_ , he thought miserably. It was _exactly_ what it needed, and the crew was already starting to pipe up with compliments to the chef. Oh, _no_. His mother would absolutely  _love_ her, and he'd only brought one other woman home to meet her.

And she fancied _Leonard_.

But he wouldn't take credit for another person's cooking. The recipe was his, but she'd pushed it the extra mile, and once the crew's crowing about the meal reached a crescendo, John cleared his throat.

"Direct yer compliments t'the chef, lads," John said, gesturing to Bonnie, not letting even an ounce of his own pride get in the way, "Bonnie's th' one who brought  _this'n_  home."

Considering it quite a return to form, Bonnie got herself a cheer from the crew. They were grateful for the fantastic meal, but also very happy to see her back in the kitchen. She was _one of them_ , now.

"Well done, lass," not _cub_ , although he did still ruffle her shaggy hair, grinning at her, "Showin' me up in me own kitchen!"

"Ain't _yer_ kitchen, Cap'n!"

Silver snapped a look out at the mess hall but the speaker was hidden in the crowd, and after a tense beat of silence Silver burst into laughter.

"No arguin' wit' that!" he chuckled, nodding to Bonnie, "Was bound t'happen one o'these days."

Once everyone had seconds ( _thirds_ for Silver) they shuffled out, leaving Bonnie and Silver to clean up. He didn't know when they'd next have so much private time together and without the entire crew shoved up his nostrils all he could smell was her and the lingering scent of the stew.

"I'll be addin' them berries in from now on," he said, "Yeh impressed me, Bonnie. Can't _remember_ th'last time anyone impressed me in th'kitchen."

Even Daisy, bless her soul, hadn't been much of a cook, especially for an Ursid. She'd grown up on an asteroid belt, both her parents hardscrabble miners who'd been born into it same as their parents had. She hadn't been a _bad_ cook by any stretch, but she just hadn't had the knack for it. He'd liked it about her, something _different_ , although his mother had pledged to catch her up the next time she saw her.

"Proud o'yeh," he told her earnestly. She'd saved all their arses and then risen from the grave to swab the kitchen floor with him, and it washed over him again, how _good_ she smelled with her scent mixed with his. Not smothered, not overpowered, but evenly _blended_. He was going to have a good long _think_ about this in his cabin later. _In private_ , "I'll wash, you dry?"

He was well within his right to bellow for Grey to come and do the dishes, but he was going to play the dangerous game of self-indulgence, enjoy the proximity until he no longer had an excuse to enjoy it.


	48. Knighted (ahimsabitches)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.
> 
> AFTER THIS CHAPTER, THE STORY WILL UPDATE TUESDAY AND THURSDAY.

She kept her mouth shut through the appreciative murmurs of the crew, waiting, for a second time, for Silver to either sing or roar. When he sang, immense relief dumped balm on her nerves. But Silver gave _her_ the credit and that wasn't right and she opened her mouth to protest, but her words were blown back into her face by the raucous, rousing cheer from the crew. A blush as crimson and hot as Grey's filled her face and her grin did not dim even when Silver ruffled her hair like a _cub._  She didn't know who spoke out in her favor, but she joined in the laughter anyway.

Silver beaming down at her with his own gap-toothed grin turned up to full wattage lit her up and warmed her through. She ate two helpings of the stew, which really _was_ very good, and almost went back to scrape the bottom of the pot but her stomach was full, and she'd only be eating it to taste it. Still, it was a _temptation._  She stuck to water so that ale would not wash what she'd learned of the recipe from her mind. It was a _family_  recipe, Silver had made very clear. Less explicit but more meaningful for it was his implication that the stew and all its history was _hers_ now. That she was, in a way, part of the _family._

The half of half of her that was Ursid had never been given its due until now. Her father spoke little of his father, other than to say he was a good man when he was sober and a sonofabitch when he wasn't and he wasn't most of the time. Bonnie's mother's eyes and lips had thinned to knifeblades when he talked about his father, so all the knowledge Bonnie had of Ursids she got from members of the team (none of them even part-Ursid), tavern-crows, crew on the ships she boarded (legally and not), and friends she made along the way. She could count the number of Ursids she'd clapped eyes on in her lifetime on two hands, despite carrying their blood in her veins. 

But now her blood sung with it, having answered the call of Silver's scent, having met Silver's challenge.  _Can't_ remember _th'last time anyone impressed me in th'kitchen._ And Silver himself, the most famous Ursid in the galaxy, had knighted her.   

Since she'd left her parents' camp, Bonnie had picked the threads that had bound her to belonging out of her heart. She'd understood her place in the world as one understands rosed-over childhood memory: with a longing, begrudged affection, bitter at the edges: she was neither Ursid nor human, belonged noplace, with no one. She had never known the feeling of being pulled into an enduring orbit by the gravity of a homeplace, a homeheart, and she had filled the empty hearth in her with a tireless rambling.

But now her heart glowed with it, _shone_  with elation _dizzying_  in its potency. And for a delicious moment, she was _home,_ she _belonged,_  among full bellies, laughing voices, and the steadily vibrant presence of her captain.

The giddy yellowbrightness in her mind stayed through the meal, spoke the word "Deal," to Silver, steered her through a swift and efficient cleanup, drew honest, joyful laughter from her as Silver did tricks with his cyborg arm, tossing and catching dishes, cups and utensils, switching his arm back and forth, and generally making an unabashed spectacle of himself. 

"Showoff," she cawed good-naturedly, and Silver laughed a guilty-as-charged laugh.

Though they were only four hands (and then some) they did the work of many, and cleanup was done swiftly. Bonnie stood back among the benches and admired her kitchen, _hers,_ with pride and contentment. Silver had almost cleaned her out, but they were only a few days away from their last port of call (she had a good guess of which one it was), and she'd do the kitchen up _proper_  and they'd enter the Expanse at their best: well-fed, well-rested, and happy as she could make them. 

Silver lingered beside her, fiddling with his pipe. 

"I don't think I've thanked you yet," she said without prelude, speaking easily but wholeheartedly. "For giving me this job. For stitching me up. You probably saved my stubborn arse." She chuckled, running a hand through her hair, which she _had_ to remember to get cut when they made port; it was _entirely_  too long. "For tonight. Teaching me that recipe. Teaching me about your family. For giving me the credit for the stew when I didn't _deserve_ it." she looked at him archly. "Juniper berries do not an entire stew make." She carried on before he could protest. "Most of all, I wanted to thank you for making me feel, for lack of a better word, like I belong somewhere. Here." she opened her arms and panned her gaze across the galley. "So... thank you, Cap'n. For everything. I'm honored to be a part of your crew." She smiled up at him and held out her hand.

 


	49. Close (ravenousgrue)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.

Her gratitude lit her up like a _sun_ and he felt _very_ warmed by it, his smile very wide as she gushed at him. He really hadn't been expecting anything like this, but it was a pleasant surprise. She offered him her hand and he gave her a measured look, wondering if he really wanted to lock himself in as _Friend And Mentor._

He couldn't think of a better friend to make, if he was honest with himself, and he swallowed her hand up in his, his smile splitting into another grin. They came easy to him. For all he'd been through, he considered himself a happy man. He was living his dreams -- what did he have to mope about? Besides young Ursid girls being enamored with _bugbears_ , anyway.

"Oh, a bloody _handshake!_ " he scoffed, pulling her in for a brief (and _gentle!!_ he didn't want to hurt her) but enthusiastic, all-encompassing _bear hug_ , "No more _flattery_ now 'r I'll get all _watery_ on yeh."

Silver released her quickly even though he didn't want to and he cleared his throat, clasping his hands in front of him as though he were begging for silent forgiveness for the embrace. He hoped he was allowed one _Freebie_ , and he promised himself he wouldn't take any more liberties. She was being so _genuine_ , he didn't want anything to spoil it.

"Yer welcome," he said, "Don't give me too much credit fer th'things yeh did under yer own power, lass. If yeh hadn't proved yerself such a fine crewman I wouldn't'a been so generous with me recipes."

Well, _one_ recipe, but his best one.

"I'm glad t'have yah, Bonnie," he said, "Couldn't think of a better person t'drag inta th'black parts a'space. Yeh _earned_ all a this, lass. All I did was nudge yeh here n'there. As fer savin' yer stubborn arse, we can call that one _square_ , aye? I seem t'recall a dead siren on me deck not a week ago."

She'd blown a hole in a siren and saved every single man on board, and without asking any questions after. Thinking of the siren reminded him of his ' _dream_ ' and he looked down at his cybernetic hand, watching the exposed servos whir and tick in response to idle signals from his brain. She hadn't pressed, and he didn't want to ruin the mood by telling _the story_ , and it was so _personal_ , besides. They were friends, but they weren't close. Not that close, anyway. Not enough to burden her with old ghosts that didn't burden him so much as shadow him.

He wanted to tell her, but he didn't want her to feel obligated to react a certain way. For a second time it was on his lips, but he let it lie, this time because it was no longer relevant.

"I'm glad yeh talked yerself on board," John said, "I can't fer th' _life_ o'me even imagine this crew carryin' on without yeh."

He'd smoked too much and the hug had been a _little_ much, and he cleared his throat, finally untying his apron and pulling it up over his head. He wanted to pull her close again and he wanted to take a deep breath that was all _her_ and he wanted to kiss her and he was _terrible_ at not going after what he wanted. His entire _personality_ was based on satisfying his wildest dreams.

"Me door is _always_ open t'yeh lass," he said, resting a big hand on her shoulder, half his fingers spilling down her upper arm, "Not so many o'our sort these days. Yeh've always got a friend in me."

He hated the words but he was proud of himself for saying them. She was a young woman with a very bright future, and he reckoned Leonard's wee lass would take quite a shine to her. It made him miserably jealous to imagine, but he'd manage.

He'd been through far worse.


	50. Bed (ahimsabitches)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.

The hug _hurt_ a little, pinched and pressed the wound on her chest, and for the  _briefest_  moment she froze in fear but pressed to his chest she could _smell him_  and what had been a single chime of a bell before was now a full _clangor_  in her head and she pulled in another breath of him before he let her go.

A smile returned to her face, this one more hazy, half-lidded and _dizzy._ She decided, with the bent logic of the drunk (or momentarily incapacitated), that hugs were just _fine_  now and she also decided that she would miss being in Silver's bed for more than just the privacy and the comfort compared to the crew's rough hammocks. 

_I could come back to his bed,_ she thought dreamily. _I wouldn't even have to ask._

She blinked. _Oh please tell me that was Mister Grim's idea of a joke,_  but she knew it wasn't and she swallowed, suddenly needing to be _away_  from him, but he'd dropped a heavy hand on her shoulder and both of his eyes were so _kind_  and she worked an easy smile back onto her face.

"I can't imagine being anywhere else," she said, forcing an image of her workstation at Perry's shop into her head, cutting off the feed of fire from her brain to that place in her belly. "Especially not back in that bodyshop."

His living hand lingered on her shoulder, and the lamplight threw the lines of muscle in his arm into _clear_  relief despite the decent coat of fur on him. She suppressed a shiver. Finally he dropped his hand.

"Thanks, Cap'n. The feeling's mutual." with the broadest grin she could manage with sincerity, to hopefully let him know she meant no offense, she said "I'm off to bed. Didn't do much but cook today, but I had to cook a _hell_ of a lot to keep up with you. Goodnight, Cap'n," she said and trotted up the stairs as quickly as she could without giving him the impression she was escaping him.

Which she was. Not him, but the swirling _aura_  of him that seemed to exist in her now. She gulped the air on deck and gradually Silver's scent cleared out of her. The crew on deck hailed her, congratulated her, tried to draw her into conversation, games, or songs, but she demurred and headed for the barracks. Yossarian at his banjo begged her to stay, but he was promptly swatted in the back of the head by Gesser's swung tricorn hat. Her hammock was as she'd left it, but her torn shirt had been folded and laid on it. She held it up. The bloodstains were nearly gone, just a rust-colored shadow, and the tears at the top hem had been stitched with thick brown thread but stitched well. Her mouth pulled up in a half smile. Wondering if it was worth playing whodunit, she curled into her hammock, being ginger about her chest and shoulder. It was early, and most of the crew were lingering on deck, so the barracks were empty and quiet and she fell asleep quickly.

She bolted awake from a dream barely remembered, but the cacophony in her head was back and the burning in her belly had revved up to a sweet ache. The barracks were dark but clamorous with the snores of the men, so she felt safe sliding her hand under the hem of her trousers to her clit and gods, she was _dripping_ wet and she squirmed and bucked her hips into her own hand and the orgasm didn't take but _two minutes_  and she clenched her teeth against a moan as it shook her. 

Relaxing with a shudder, she sighed. _Glad_ that's _out of my system._

She slept soundly, awoke to Grey shaking her in the darkness. "Time to start breakfast, Miss Bonnie. Guess you're still used to sleeping in as late as you like." There was a smile in his voice. Fortunately her apron did not smell like Silver, and fortunately there was nothing of him lingering in the galley from the night before and breakfast passed without incident. Most fortunately, the crew was there to distract her. She and Silver had just made _friends,_  and nothing more. He was _still_ Captain and she was _still_  only cook and she made up her mind to keep a reasonable buffer of time and space between them, until she could be _sure_ whatever buried Ursid thinghe'd stirred up in her had settled. Until they made port, at least. She'd go ashore, spend however much time he allowed _away_  from the ship, and return fresh. Maybe even find _someone_  to spend shore leave with. If they were docking where she hoped they were, there was a chance--slim, but present--there would be someone.

 


	51. Pot and Kettle (ravenousgrue)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings.

He'd been ready to wash his hands of it until he'd settled into his own bed, and his melodramatic (and tragically witnessed) sigh of relief choked off into a strangled _groan_. She'd rolled around in his scent for almost a week, and in the process, rolled _hers_ around _his_ sheets. John tried to ignore it but there were some things a feller couldn't ignore, not if he knew what was good for him, and it would be harmless besides.

Not only was it quick, it about curled the five toes he had left right off his feet, and he'd heard the headboard _groan_ in protest he'd _squeezed_ it so hard. All he'd done was imagine her there with him, nothing fancy. Just her lithe young self _riding_ him, the scars the siren had left her drawing his eyes along the smooth lines of her body.

He was having a difficult time being ashamed of himself. It wasn't like she _knew_ , and she couldn't, not unless he told her, which he would absolutely _never do._

John didn't sleep well that night. They couldn't reach port soon enough. He'd get this out of his system for good: he didn't want it rattling around in his head when they were going to be in _very_ dangerous space. The only thing more dangerous were the vast, lightyears-long gaps between galaxies, and not even Long John Silver was certain he was the sort of man who took things _that_ far. He liked the Milky Way _just fine_. Plenty of blank spots on the map still before moving on to a fresh one.

The port on the edge of the Expanse was in orbit of a stormy planet that was more water than it was land. Though it possessed no sentient life (that had been discovered) the seas were very deep and vast and the subject of lengthy research. The planet was affectionately called The Pot, the well-worn spaceport The Kettle, and the disconcerting black beyond both was where _they_ were going.

There was a good buzz of excitement from the crew and from the dockmaster that took them in at the Kettle, and John knew news of their arrival would spread _very_ quickly. He gave the crew a list of duties he wanted sorted out by the end of the week, and so long as they were, and so long as they didn't get arrested or cause trouble, he wouldn't ask _any_ questions about what they got up to in the interim. This was their last stop before they were in completely unexplored space, and he didn't want anyone dwelling on unfinished business while they were so exposed and vulnerable. 

"If'n yeh need me it won't be hard t'find me," were his parting words, "But if it's all the same to yeh, _don't come lookin_ '."

There were some knowing chuckles from the crew who'd been on longer voyages with him. Long John Silver hadn't gotten his name because of a battle or because of an enemy, and it wasn't because he towered over most folks.

He had been so nick-named by the girls he called on in the many ports he'd stopped at, and it wasn't a reputation he minded _one bit_. John wasn't looking for his usual _flavor_ of girl, though, and once they'd all split off (after agreeing they would try to meet up at the Black Gate Tavern, which sounded very much like a good bar to get free drinks in exchange for wild stories) John headed straight for one of the _many_ brothels and then had the very difficult task of finding a human-sized girl he would feel comfortable with. He felt out of his element, which he wasn't used to, and he could tell some of the girls who'd _expected_ his patronage (his _particular tastes_ were as common knowledge as the fact that he was a cyborg) were disappointed.

Finally a girl chose _him_ , maybe sensing his reluctance and charmed by his nerves, all but pulling him into her establishment with a flippant remark to her boss, a Madame who was eyeing him _very_ shrewdly, that she ought to have any other Johns (that always got a chuckle out of Silver) who came to call turned away. _She'd be busy_.

"There he goes," Barkly said wryly, glancing who was beside him as the Captain stumped off in a big hurry. It was Bonnie, and he nodded at her, "Do you need help with anything? I'll be on the ship until this evening, so if you need something later, someone will be available."

_Not the Captain,_ was his point. The man had a libido that put Lagomorphid's to shame.


	52. Niobe (ahimsabitches)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for sex, drugs, rock and roll. Minus the rock and roll. I LOVE this chapter.

Since the lookout had called _Planet ho_  and since she'd heard it _was_  Kettle, her heart had been in her throat even though the chances were slim. How long had it been since she'd been to Kettle? Two, three years? Definitely long enough to lose track of people.

Which was easy to do when the person you wanted to track down was often paid, _handsomely,_ to disappear.

She barely heard Silver giving her instructions (she knew exactly what kind of stock she'd need for the kitchen and she paid just enough attention to make sure he didn't add anything); she barely heard the crew muttering among themselves about the grim black presence crouched just a light-day away, waiting and hungry, off the starboard side of the ship. Nobody looked at it, but everyone talked about it, but Bonnie would not focus on it.

Instead she leaned far over the port railing, nearly losing her balance, trying to see down into the currents of people eddying around the wandering rows of buildings. Barkly was beside her at the railing, watching Silver stride away, beelining for something beyond their sight.

"No, thanks, Mister Barkly, I've got everything under control. What I can't carry back to the ship myself I'll get delivered, and make sure I'm here when it arrives." She curtseyed a quick goodbye with the tails of her coat and trotted down the gangplank. Silver had turned right, so she turned left, scanning faces, arranging a list in her mind of places to check first. 

"EO _DANA_  MER _CA_ TUR!" The voice rang clear and strident over the bustle of dock traffic after she'd taken only three steps, and for the second time in as many minutes, she froze. A slow grin breaking over her face like a wave, she turned.

Like the prow of a dreadnought parting thick herds of _Orcus Galacticus_ , the Canid strode toward her, head forward, elbows out, wolfish ears pinned against her head, black hair streaming iridescent in the high sun. Bonnie's grin grew the closer she got, despite the woman's flashing fangs and furious ice-blue eyes.

" _Three years,_ Mercatur _?_ Three bloody _years?"_ the woman shrieked, bulling close enough for Bonnie to just make out the beginnings of white in the light dusting of steel-colored fur on her face. "I didn't see your name _or_ any of your aliases in any crew rosters, any wanted bulletins, any hitlists, any Division assignments, or any-- _anywhere!_ I thought you were _dead!_ What the fuck _else_  was I supposed to think! You just up and _disappear_ on me like that? Who the _fuck_  do you think you _are_?!"

Bonnie willed the smile off her face and let the Canid blow herself out, a tiny hurricane with _beautifully_  grown-out ravenblack hair, a few new scars, and a new leather vest, decorated with custom sheathes for the various weapons she carried, that looked _quite fetching_ on her small but well-muscled frame.

When she was done blustering, chest heaving lightly, Bonnie smiled moonily. "I like your hair."

" _Fuck_  you, Mercatur."

"How's business?"

"No. Don't pull that shit on me. Tell me where you've been and _why you haven't sent word."_

"You're the one who's a bitch to track down. I tried. You left."

" _Because you did!"_

"I'm sorry."

" _Fuck you, Mercatur."_

"Time and place?"

The Canid glanced at the ship from which Bonnie had just disembarked, ignoring Bonnie's _wicked_  grin. "So you're a pirate now," she spat.

"Not really."

"You crew on the _Ursa Major?_ Don't fuck around; you're a pirate."

"If merely associating with a certain type of company makes you one of them, then _you,_  Niobe, are one _hell_ of a Federation brownnoser."

Niobe narrowed her crystalline blue eyes and for a moment Bonnie thought she would take a swing at her.

"I've got a week's shore leave. Aside from a few errands I need to run, I'm yours."

"Seven _days?_ That's supposed to make up for _three bloody years?"_

Bonnie reached into the bag hung over her unwounded shoulder and pulled out a small wooden box with a sliding top and a crude carving of a snake slithering and twisting around the sides. She slid the top back with a thumb and let Niobe glance at the six tiny white pills inside, each stamped with a little smiley-face. "I got 'em at the Sinkhole last year. Save me one and the rest are yours."

Niobe, a full head shorter and a few sizes narrower than Bonnie, crossed her arms over her chest and cocked her hip. "So you're bribing me now." her voice, absent the shrillness of anger, was musical and expressive, accented in the proper, clipped Federation manner she had adopted falsely at first. 

Bonnie snapped the lid of the box shut. "Kiss me or fuck off, Ny."

The Canid launched herself at Bonnie, throwing her arms around the taller woman's neck, and kissed her hard. Niobe smelled like leather and gun oil and pipesmoke and Canid and each scent flipped memories off and on like switches. Niobe's lips moved against hers hungrily, _angrily._ She tangled her hands in Niobe's smooth, thick, luxurious hair and a fire started in her. Voices whooping and piercing whistles filtered through the jumble of _Niobe_  in her mind and she realized in passing that they had been in plain view of the ship-- and _crew_ \-- the whole time, but that didn't matter just now and neither did the ribald but good-natured taunts the men on board threw at her. Without breaking the kiss, Niobe flipped her middle finger up in the direction of the ship. Bonnie chuckled into her mouth. 

"Mmm, behave. They're my crew," she murmured.

"They're _men."_

"They're _good_ men."

Niobe reared back and fixed her with a piercing gaze. "Eodana, you of _all_ people should know that men aren't good."

"Not when compared to you," she said, and pulled Niobe into another kiss.

"How long did you say you had?" Niobe murmured, her voice low and husky with need.

"A week."

"We ought to get started then." Niobe looped an arm around her waist and led Bonnie back the way she'd come. Over her shoulder, she shouted "Enjoy the view, boys, 'cause this is the best you'll get!" Bonnie chuckled as she felt Niobe's small strong hand grip a healthy handful of her arse.

As an undercover agent for an organization she'd never named but Bonnie suspected was the same one responsible for the massive breach of the Division's records four months ago, which had allowed her to ferret out her parents' logbooks, Niobe's nature as nomadic as Bonnie's. So their lodgings were a tiny room in a leaky, drafty inn, but a nod from Niobe was all the payment the flabby, antennaed innkeeper apparently needed. 

The filthy floor didn't matter. The greasy, cheap candlelight didn't matter. The black mildew on the warped wooden walls didn't matter. The lumpy bed didn't matter. Nothing mattered but the taste of Niobe's cunt and the feeling of her muscles rippling under her fur and the moans they drew from each other and the delicious pain of Niobe's claws raking her back. They stayed in bed until the sun reached its zenith the next day, and Niobe whined pitifully when Bonnie began to dress.

"Come on, lazybones, you're going to help me shop," she said, grabbing Niobe by the ankle and dragging the smaller woman out of bed like a sack of vegetables. The sun streamed in through the arrowslit window and lay in sinuous curves across Niobe's lithe body. 

Niobe halfheartedly flung a pillow at her. "Gerroff. Not all of us can just putter around in a kitchen all day. Last week I was in a firefight in the Fed outpost on Gliese Gamma. Bloody laser tagged me on my leg."

"And I got mauled by a bloody great slugbeast. I win. Come on."

" _Nooooooo_ ," Niobe howled and slid bonelessly to the floor, groaning melodramatically.

Bonnie giggled. "Want I should carry you, baby pup?"

"Please. That'd be lovely."

So she did, striding proudly out of the inn with the Canid slung over her unwounded shoulder. Conversation in the main room ceased and eyes followed her out.

That night, they swallowed one of the smiley-pills each and Niobe led her to the center of the port, where a large, circular stone courtyard lay. In the center, a massive bonfire, taller than twice Silver, blazed fiercely. At a safe distance, dancers ringed the fire. Drummers and players formed an outer ring, and Niobe, dressed in a simple, billowing skirt and a shirt that left her toned shoulders and graceful neck bare, leapt into the ring of dancers without hesitation. Bonnie watched, enraptured, as she spun in the firelight.The effects of the pill were slow to build but long-lasting, and as the Canid danced, she became a witch of fire, living starlight, trailing brilliant white comet-like tails from her hands, feet, and twirling hair.

The drummer by Bonnie abandoned his set to dance, and Bonnie slid into his place. The feral, throaty beat of the drums took her quickly. The borders between skin and air were vibrated away by sound, by bluewhite starlight and roaring red firelight at war, and Bonnie's awareness flowed down her arms to her hands into each strike of the drum, the boom of her existence pulsed outward to join the heartbeat of the fire.

She drummed and Niobe danced until they were both drenched in sweat and panting. They dropped together onto a folded blanket behind the ring of drummers and, tracing rainbows of sound on each other's skin, remained until the color of the world returned to a less turbulent normality.  

Though the gaping endless maw of the Expanse yawned far from them, and though a bonfire, no matter how big, could not relight the blighted stars, they kept it burning, a vigil of thrumming, roaring life, naked and brazen against the Expanse, as if daring it to come snuff it out. The people on Kettle, no matter how long they stayed, found and returned to the fire as lost ships are drawn to a lighthouse's beacon. Bonnie and Niobe, no different than anyone else, drew strength from the flames, from each other. When they parted on the last day of Bonnie's leave, they carried each other's scents in their skin and the defiant light of the fire in their veins.


	53. Jimbo (ravenousgrue)

John spent more time with the crew than he did alone, and after a _very_ full day learning that humans weren't _quite_ as breakable as he originally thought, he'd met up at the tavern they'd agreed to meet up at later. Everyone showed saved one: _Bonnie_ , who Barkly told him when he'd gotten tired of him watching the door had run off with a canid girl after a deep and _familiar_ kiss.

His heart sank even though it had no right to. Hadn't he just spent a whole day with a _prostitute_? He forced himself to be glad she'd reunited with someone she felt so passionately for, especially at the edge of the Expanse. Not all of them would have that sort of closure when they left. Barkly himself, he knew, would be spending all his freetime on the video comms with his family, their physical farewell over a month behind them.

Despite good sense telling him otherwise, he was a bit _sour_ about the information. A canid, a _woman_! Maybe she wasn't interested in Leonard at all, all of them _Close Friends_. _Which was **fine**_. Bonnie was a good woman and a fine friend, she'd just managed to tangle him up in some Ursid biological nightmare, where his body was _roaring_ to claim what he had _no right_ to claim.

Not without _explicit_ permission. It'd come swiftly with Daisy, he had mused. To finally smell one of his own after so long, someone who _wasn't_ his parents or a distant relative, had been an almost _religious_ experience. His blood _sang_ for her, he _ached_ for her when she was away, and the first time they'd made love had been a ferocious affair that had left them _both_ a little startled in the aftermath. He hadn't had an eye for another woman for the duration of his relationship with her, something that had not happened before or since.

Bonnie was only half of a _half_ but comparing the two, his reaction was the same. Much as he would _never_ discount his feelings for Daisy, that he was feeling so _similar_ told him that the reaction was a primal one, not based on anything _reasonable_. Eventually _, he hoped_ , he would get used to her scent and it would cease to whip him into a lusty fervor.

It was partway through the week when the Naval presence started to gnaw at him. Bonnie hadn't been so much as _glimpsed_ , and while his backroom channels assured him there were no outstanding or even _new_ warrants out for him or any of his crew, he didn't like that Bonnie had gone off with a _Navy girl_ , didn't like all the Navy _idling around_ , a lot of them knowing him by sight from rumor alone.

He'd been considering looking into their presence when he'd seen _him_ , a head and shoulders above his fellow Navy men, and his sour mood was burned away by a _supernova_ of good cheer.

"JIMBO MY LAD!" his booming voice parted the crowd between them and Jim whirled, his eyes like saucers, his mouth in an O of surprise. He didn't waste time once he realized who he was hearing and seeing was real and suddenly the lad (barely a lad anymore, by thunder he'd _grown_!) was up in his arms and both of them were laughing.

And then he felt a soft, strange blob cuddling his cheek, could feel it cooing madly and he shed a tear or two (or a _bucketful_ ) for Morph, whom he'd missed _far_ more terribly than he'd ever admit. He'd found Morph soon after he'd lost Daisy, and the little critter had helped him through some terrible times.

He'd hoped Morph would do the same for Jim, and it looked very much like he had. Though he could see Jim's Academy mates looked unimpressed that he was consorting with the most notorious pirate in the Milky Way (now that Flint was confirmed dead), Jim paid them no mind, and he spent the remainder of their time in port with him, catching up and exchanging information that Jim probably ought not to, but John wasn't about to tell him what he could and couldn't do. That wasn't his job anymore. He was a man grown now, or at least he acted like one, and he had John convinced.

Silver felt an _outrageous_ amount of pride hearing of how well Jim had done in the Academy. _Easy_ , he'd said, compared to what Silver had put him through. Jim was as close to a son as he'd ever have and he couldn't have asked for a better one, but it wasn't _all_ good cheer. He was in port for a reason: pirate activity had _skyrocketed_ in the past few weeks.

Since the Ursa Major had left port, in fact. Silver had figured him buying a ship and setting course for the Expanse would've stirred up gossip, but he wasn't happy to hear it was mostly _pirates_ who were interested. They'd been shaking down science vessels in the sector while they waited for him to arrive, and he was _very_ glad to have Jim as a friend in that moment, to know they were going to be in for trouble.

He and Barkly reviewed the armory and arranged to make some extra purchases, to install some extra security, but John knew no amount of preparation would really be enough for a pirate attack. It would be sudden and brutal, and it would test the mettle of everyone on board. There was a slim chance the Expanse would deter them, but Long John Silver knew how strong the promise of treasure was, even if said treasure didn't exist.

The last few days rushed by quick, and so he'd tried to show Jim the best time he could, but the lad balked at hookers, bashfully admitting after much, much interrogation that he had a _girl_ back at the Academy and Silver praised him for being such a _steady_ lad. 

He got him rip-roaring drunk instead. Silver didn't _entirely_ remember what they'd talked about, but when he woke up to Morph turning into a tiny version of himself and squeaking 'Bonnie!!' over and over he figured he had a good idea of how the evening had gone.

After one last hurrah with some girls he'd run into in a _very_ shady bar (they attempted to cozy their way onto the ship, stating they'd be happy to be paid a retainer to 'occupy' the crew) it was time to go. He and Jim had parted on good terms, and Morph, bless his protoplasm or whatever he was made of, seemed to sense where he was most needed. It was a tearful goodbye, but not a final one, and even if he couldn't (and _shouldn't_ , in this particular case) have what he wanted, he'd at least have what he _needed_. Morph chittered and cooed, looking very much like he was trapped in Silver's orbit, and with a lost piece of himself restored, he felt as ready as he'd ever be to leap into the unknown.

It was for the best he didn't spend the week with Bonnie, he thought. If he had, he had a very strong hunch he would've cancelled the whole trip. He'd had that hunch once before and ignored it and he'd spent a year at his parent's inn recuperating and mourning. Now, on deck as he looked out into the void, he felt ready. _Excited_. Morph chirruped uneasily and burrowed in close to him, between his neck and his collar, and Silver soothed him, stroking him absently with one finger.

"We're goin' t'see th'other side, Morphy," he murmured to the critter, a look of fierce determination on his face. Morph chirruped and snuggled in closer. He'd go where Silver went. Keep him safe, like he had with Jim.

When the crew returned he gathered everyone up on deck, paying no mind to the crowd dockside that was gawking, and this time Mr. Grim, who they'd barely even seen since the siren attack, was present as well.

Silver told them that this wouldn't be easy. That they were going into a place that was more rumor than fact, that the whorling dark gasses that choked the Expanse would make it seem like there were no stars, make it seem like they weren't moving, and that they'd have to dig very, very deep into what they were made of to make it through. The stars would be waiting for them on the other side.

And Silver told them he believed each and every one of them could do it. He wouldn't have brought them if he hadn't thought so, and he hadn't changed his mind. Silver was confident in his crew, proud of them so far, and he reasserted that he'd make it his business to get them all home to their friends and lovers and families. And _money_.

Mr. Grim had transferred the first half of their payments into their accounts the night before, giving everyone time to send it wherever it needed sending, and though he had no follow-up speech, his presence was an indicator that things would be different now. _Tenser_.

Silver waited until they were well away from the straining ears on the dock to gather them up for another meeting, just at the edge of the Expanse.

"We're bein' _hunted_ , lads," Silver said grimly, "Not sure how many ships, but _all_ o' them _pirate_ , and all of 'em presumin' we got our eyes set on another cache o'treasure. No sense tryin' t'reason wit' 'em so we'd all best be on our toes. No single watches, and _nobody's_ unarmed on deck. Mr. Barkly n'I upgraded th'Ursa Major's proximity sensors, but... I've heard tell sensors don't amount t'much out here. Eyes n'ears open. _Stay sharp_."

And that was all he could really say, anything else stolen away as they cruised into the leading edge of the Expanse. It was a disconcerting illusion, how it seemed to swallow them up, how the gleaming, cheery spaceport vanished from sight, how it seemed like a heavy weight started to press down on them.

Morph shivered, but Silver didn't react outwardly, ignoring the chill that gripped his own spine. 

They'd reach the other side or die trying.


	54. Here We Go (ahimsabitches)

Stepping on board the _Ursa Major_ for the second time was like stepping aboard a new ship. It looked the same and smelled the same, but the energy of the crew was at once dampened and jazzed up, and not in a happy way. Bonnie didn't have to look at the blot of black off the starboard side to know why.

She threw a comforting arm around Grey, who she swore had grown half an inch while she'd been gone, and listened to Silver's speech for the second time. But like the aura settled over the ship, the usual garrulous good humor behind his words was muted.

"Whassat pink floaty thing wid th' Cap'n?" She heard Lucky whisper behind her.

"Dunno. Good luck charm, mayhap?" was Yossarian's reply.

Whatever it was, Bonnie hoped it didn't read minds.

Grey's eyes kept returning to Mr Grim, who stayed on deck for the launch, as they got underway. If the strange grey-skinned creature spoke to anybody, he did it on frequencies only meant for them. He stood motionless in the smack middle of the main deck, facing the void ahead of them, while the crew bustled around him. He made no move to help, but he did not hinder either. What he was waiting for, Bonnie did not know.

Silver reassembled them after their course had been set and gave them another speech, this one downright dire. Grey went rigid beside her, and for a moment she thought Mr Grim must be speaking to him, but it was just fear. She hugged him tight for no other reason than, for the second time, he looked like she felt.

Leonard handed them both laser pistols from the armory. "Keep them on you when you're on deck." After a pause: "Actually, just... keep them on you at all times."

They nodded, Grey's prominent Adam's apple bobbing.

The crew seemed to take a collective in-breath as the black swallowed them up. The atmo shielded them from the gripping cold, but even it could not keep a chill out. Bonnie pulled her coat tighter over her shoulders and gazed up, out, down, back, into one great big stinking rank of _nothing._ She shuddered, feeling very much like they were _sinking,_ sinking into deep, cold water, the pressure crouching on their chests like a living gelatinous blob, eyeless and coldly _aware_ in the depths.

Grey whimpered quietly.

"Food time now," she said thickly, and pulled him belowdecks to the galley.

They lit every single lamp in the galley and stoked the oven fire to a roaring blaze. It could not sear the darkness out of their minds completely, but Bonnie had told Grey with confidence she didn't feel that they'd get used to it, just like they'd gotten used to Mr Grim's presence. Bonnie had filled the kitchen to _bursting_ with supplies, blasting through Silver's budget and using some of her portion of Mr Grim's payment to supplement. The kitchen and its produce, she hoped, would become the biggest, maybe even the sole, beacon of comfort and light while they sludged through the Expanse, and she would keep this light burning as _brightly_ as she could for as long as she could.

That included herself as well.

To that end, she'd made some _other_ purchases, just little things, to brighten flagging spirits _._ She'd wait for the right time to hand them out, but there were two gifts she'd give sooner rather than later.

Supper that night-- a bell signaling artificial night in an eternal dark-- wasn't as _grim_ as she'd thought it would be, despite their financier's presence in the galley for half the meal. She scooped a plate for Grey, puffing the hair out of her eyes and _bitterly_ regretting forgetting to get her hair cut. She'd briefly considered asking to borrow a razor from one of the men, but something in her twitched at the idea of flashing around a bare blade in the sinister waiting presence of the Expanse when it wasn't _absolutely_ necessary.

Making sure the crew was occupied with their food, she scooted onto the bench next to the young Sileni and placed a wrapped bundle between them on the seat. "For you," she said quietly. Grey blinked, glanced down, unwrapped it. His face fell open in surprise at the new black leather bag, fully loaded with every basic piece of equipment she and Niobe had thought a medic might need.

"Miss Bonnie--!" he bleated.

"You're our medic and we're in the middle of nowhere, at risk of pirate attacks. That's as much a necessity as a gift," she said, smiling anyway.

He gaped like a landed fish, his head bobbing from her face to the bag in his lap. "Th-thank you, Miss Bonnie," he said. She hugged him again, tight. He hugged back, beaming when they broke and already riffling through the kit. She rose with her plate. "Seconds?"

"No thanks," he said distractedly, his attention on the bag.

"I'm getting you some anyway," she said, nudging his ribs with her plate. "You're growing too fast for your own good."

She refilled several plates, the faces in front of them ranging from morose to cheerful, and returned to Grey's side with another heaping plate for him. "Put that away and _eat,_ kiddo; you'll have plenty of time to play with it later," she said, and immediately hoped he didn't pick up on the unintentional-- hopefully incorrect-- portent in her words.

The men did not linger on deck after dinner as they normally did, talking, smoking, gaming, strumming. They moved their operations into the barracks, which soon became cramped and stifled, and Bonnie risked the disquieting dark on deck. Her hand automatically went to the pistol stuck into the right side of her belt and the knife, a gift from Niobe, sheathed on her left. Silver stood at the tiller, cyborg eye dim and lidded and living eye on the steadiness of black ahead of them. He looked very much like a _Captain,_ shoulders back, mouth set, great coat gently moving in the artificial breeze.

So far, the shore leave had been exactly what she'd needed to clear Silver out of her head. The warmth of _belonging_ , of _family,_ had returned when she'd clapped eyes on him, and fortunately, that was all. She held his gift behind her back and held a smile on her face as she ascended the stairs to the foredeck.

Before she rose two steps, a pink, chattering thing _flew_ up in front of her and she very nearly toppled over backward. " _Wha_ \--" she barked in surprise. The thing, amorphous and smallish, flitted around her and gibbered at her unintelligibly but excitedly, a smile in its huge, liquid eyes. "Hullo, little one," she said.

" _Hullo little one,_ " it said, in a high and squeaky mimic of her voice. She held out a hand. The thing pressed itself against it, then snuggled against her neck and cheek, chattering all the while. The sensation, jellylike and fluid, would have been unnerving if it hadn't been warm. Bonnie giggled and twitched her shoulder up. The thing flew back to Silver and perched on his broad shoulder. Bonnie climbed the rest of the stairs to the tiller and grinned at the little purring blob.

"I've seen some strange critters, but I've _never_ seen a critter like that before. Tell me you rescued him from that horrible pet shop across the street from the butcher shop."

She'd have taken all the creatures there had Niobe not pulled her away and promised she'd threaten the owner nice and thoroughly.


	55. Little Snot (ravenousgrue)

He saw Bonnie before Morph did, but only _just_ , and Morph distracted her long enough for him to draw in a deep breath and release it in a heavy sigh. Silver picked up what he assumed was the _canid woman_ twined around her scent now, and he couldn't say it did much for him.

Maybe if he'd been _invited_...

He laughed at her reaction to Morph, and it wasn't an uncommon one. Curiously strange as he was, he was so inoffensively _cute_ that most folks could only coo in wonderment at him.

"This here feller is Morph," Silver said, "Found him all alone on Proteus-1, poor little bugger half starved t'death. Years n'years ago. Almost _twenty_ , I'd say."

Morph cooed and flattened himself against Silver's cheek. He was good company out here, staring out into the abyss, but Bonnie was a fine addition.

"Morph, this's _Bonnie_. She-"

" _Bonnie! Bonnie!_ " Morph chirruped. John looked nervously between Morph and Bonnie, but he didn't add anything else. Morph usually seemed to be of... limited intelligence, but he sometimes suspected that he knew exactly what he was doing. Much as John loved the little bugger, he could be a real _liability_ when it came to women. Morph turned into a tiny version of Bonnie and kissed Silver's cheek, proving his point, and John irritably swatted at him with his hat, "That's enougha _that_ now, yeh lil' _snot_."

Morph reverted to his globule state and chittered out a _giggle_ , returning to Bonnie to inspect her a bit more thoroughly. He had not once, John had noticed, gone to inspect Mr. Grim, and John decided he wasn't going to ask. Maybe they had an _understanding_.

"T'what do I owe th'pleasure o'yer company, lass?" he asked her. Morph, circling around behind her, started to gibber excitedly and transformed into the shorthand for _present_ , a white box with a bright red ribbon, "Morph, don't go ruinin' folks surprises! Git back here!"

Morph giggled and hid in Bonnie's hair, one eye peering out cheekily at his 'master'. John glared at him but it transformed easily into a smile.

" _Bonnie_ ," he chastised, "Yeh didn't have t'get me anythin'. Yer a sweet lass t'think o'me on yer shore leave."

Maybe it was a friendship bracelet. He kept his cynical thought to himself, and somehow resisted the urge to flick a look at Mr. Grim, who was most assuredly 'hearing' every word spoken or otherwise.


	56. Bigdipper (ahimsabitches)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No warnings. I know the chapters are short lately; good things are on the horizon, I promise!

" _Morph,_ no _fair!"_ Bonnie yipped in mock indignation of Morph's betrayal of her purpose. But she was happy to have the little blob snuggled so close to her. Despite the _strangeness_ of seeing herself in miniature, and the _further_ strangeness of seeing herself in miniature kissing Silver's cheek. Could Morph read minds after all? The thought unsettled her, more so for the fact that the little pink blob seemed a sight less _tactful_ than Mr Grim. If he had been scanning her mind the whole voyage, he'd have enough to _hang_ her with and then some, if he ever chose to broadcast it.

Proteus I, fully terraformed by now, hadn't had any telepathic life on it that she could remember. She hadn't set foot there for a long time, but she vaguely remembered the planet's turbulent atmosphere and even more _turbulent_ wildlife. It made sense that this little pink blob came from there, if it had. Camouflage and mimicry seemed to be its modus operandi, and neither of those things required telepathy.

But still... how had he known?

Morph figure-eighting through her hair, she held out her gift to Silver, which was twofold: the decent-sized leather pouch, which could be attached to a belt or carried by a strap. Big enough for him but small enough not to be a hassle. Its flap had been pressed with the sigil of her family: a simplified planetary map, oval in shape and divided into sections by curving latitude and longitude lines. The continents beneath the demarcation lines made a rough M. Inside, she'd tucked two packages of pipeweed.  
  
"Since you gave me something that belonged to your family, I thought I'd give you something that belonged to mine. The stuff inside is Bigdipper. I didn't believe the herbalist at first, but...I looked it up. Apparently they still grow it on your-- on _our_ \-- homeworld. Now that I think about it, you probably know all about it, but... well, at least you have more now."


End file.
